My engine is in the car stripped to the block. The pistons have a decent amount of hard carbon deposits on the crowns as well as some in the combustion chamber part of the cylinders. I'd like to clean this up a bit but dont want to gouge the metal or let a bunch of solvent seep into the oil pan. Anybody know how I can get this accomplished?? Thanks.

Protect surrounding areas with rags, etc, then break out a cup-style wire brush on your drill motor. Bring the pistons up to Top Dead Center two at a time and do them there. Use compressed air if equipped to blow out around the top of the piston when you are through with each. A little carbon dust is not going to hurt anything... An errant wire from the brush might, so clean up the best you can. Same goes for the head.

"DW"

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If it ain't broke, fix it!

I would be very careful about removing chunks of carbon, as they can be very hard (with motor metal combined) and can get down between the piston and wall. I have seen a few motors with cyl wall gouges after such cleaning.

That said, I have carefully removed some piston carbon using a rag, followed by vacuuming the carbon chunks/dust. After that, I moved the pistons down to the bottom of the bore, vacuumed and cleaned the cyl walls with a slightly oiled (clean) rag, then repeated this a couple of times for each piston until the chunks did not appear on the wall.

Cheers,

Lou

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