Cleaned my pistons, look at the difference
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TECH Enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 593
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From: Chicago Heights, IL
Cleaned my pistons, look at the difference 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.
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.
Thread Starter
TECH Enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 593
Likes: 1
From: Chicago Heights, IL
Re: Cleaned my pistons, look at the difference
Those look brand new, I bet that took some time to do 
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...
All that build up was free compression... Looks good. I scraped the carbon off mine when and it comes off pretty easily..
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Joined: Nov 2001
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From: SW Florida
Re: Cleaned my pistons, look at the difference
Did you leave the head gasket on so you did not score the deck surface?
No problem at all...
