Constrictor 98TA

I put my new set of CHS Stage 2 heads on this past weekend. Before doing that I wanted to clean up the remainder of the gasket material. The walkthrough I am following says to just use a plastic ice scraper to get the chunks off, but I wanted to get the residue off too, so I took a fine emery cloth and rubbed it away. Then I worked on cleaning the carbon and oil gunk off the surface of my pistons.

At first I tried using a medium emery cloth, but this stuff was caked on too much. So I just got out a razor blade and scraped it off. I made sure to turn my crank so each piston I was working on was at TDC when working on it, and I went very slowly and made sure not to gash the pistons. After cleaning off all the gunk, I used mineral spirits to clean the remainder of the residue off, and then used my emery cloth VERY lightly to get the rest of the discoloration off. Heres a before and after pic of the piston in cylinder number 1, and a whole shot of that side of the engine right after I was done.

BTL FED

iTrader: (9)

Those look brand new, I bet that took some time to do

2001 Pewter WS6

iTrader: (43)

All that build up was free compression... Looks good. I scraped the carbon off mine when and it comes off pretty easily..

Constrictor 98TA

Believe it or not, it didnt take all that long. I would say around 5-10 minutes per piston. I took my time with the razor blade, as not to gouge the piston, but it comes off fairly easily with the razor. Then I just wiped it down with Mineral Spirits and a rag, that takes like 10 seconds. Then I took the emery cloth and lightly rubbed it for maybe 20-30 seconds, and thats it!

Cleaning the surface of the block took longer, because I only used the emery cloth and had to keep going over it again and again, and again...
Heh, I actually thought about that. But I would rather lose what little compression, to have everything clean. Once my engine goes back together, it will have an oil catch can, so hopefully less oil will be consumed, minimizing future oil deposits. It will be interesting if I ever take my heads off again to see what it looks like after having an oil catch can on.

robertbartsch

Did you leave the head gasket on so you did not score the deck surface?

Tin Indian

I did the same thing with my pistons. The nice thing about the LS1 is that the pistons stick up slightly higher than the block deck, so when you scrape the pistons with a single edged razor (in one of those metal holders), it don't contact the block surface.

No problem at all...