Thread: Clean carbon from piston head

With the heads off what is the best way to clean carbon deposits from the piston head. I was thinking steel wool and a brass brush with the shop vac running.

I would recommend leaving it there.

Put at tdc n carefully scrape it off with a pile of new razor blades and old credit cards for the radiused edge of the dish

Originally Posted by Turbocharged400sbc

Put at tdc n carefully scrape it off with a pile of new razor blades and old credit cards for the radiused edge of the dish

Exactly what I did but I used carb cleaner on a rag to help loosen it up before scraping

I was going to use the non metal "steel wool" and some brake cleaner along with the shop vac to clean up debris as good as possible.

These.

Little rubber/plastic fingers on them, work awesome removing stuff like that. I always use them to clean gasket surfaces on cars.

3M bristle discs.

Do not use those.
carbon is abrasive enough. No need to toss in aluminum oxide too.
with clean new razor blades it is extremely easy to push the carbon off the top of the piston towards the dish to keep crap out of the ring gap. A thin swipe of grease around the edge as it sticks up above the deck at tdc... will help keep it out.
then turn it down slowly towards bdc while wiping the grease and carbon off the bore.

Rinse and repeat x6

Always a personal opinion here, I'll continue to use them.

Run e85??

Super lazy way. Convert car to e85. Drive it like it owes you money. Pistons will be absolutely spotless. I swear I could have rubbed them on a white cloth and not made the cloth dirty when I was replacing my explodified engine.

Originally Posted by Frosty

Super lazy way. Convert car to e85. Drive it like it owes you money. Pistons will be absolutely spotless. I swear I could have rubbed them on a white cloth and not made the cloth dirty when I was replacing my explodified engine.

No way. Really? Are you running an EGR?

I would love to see tear down pictures of an E85 fed engine.

I was there, clean as a whistle no carbon and no him and I are not

There is a potato cam photo in there of my clean engine / shattered pistons. 160 or so thousand miles on the engine. 20,000 on e85.

http://www.grandprixforums.net/threa...e-replacing-it

Originally Posted by Fivefingerdeathpunch

Always a personal opinion here, I'll continue to use them.

its the personal opinion of GM that you not use them unless the assembly being "surface prepped" is able to be completely cleaned before installation into/on the engine

roloc brillo pads as well as the bristle pads. you may be thinking of the earlier (i believe around 98/99) TSB where GM said you may use the bristle discs but GM does not endorse the use of "these products or similar" i believe in 01 they released a superseded TSB that banishes the bristle discs to non internal engine/trans work as the brillo pads before....turns out they were still destroying engines..... and instead reiterates the plastic scrapper/clean razor blade methods

http://chicagoengines.com/tech/bulle...ning-Discs.htm

search for the roloc TSB or surface conditioning TSB. youll find one from every major manufacturer.

basically dont use em unless you can then completely clean the part/crevices that can catch the abrasives.

I would not use anything as harsh as a razor personally.

I prefer to spray brake cleaner on a rag and wipe them off. If there's more buildup. Get a plastic/nylon dish scrubber
http://www.alibaba.com/product-detai...580410584.html

A little brake clean, a little scrub and you won't ever hurt the coating on the pistons.
Here's what they should look like when you do it properly.

Yah bill that sounds good. What about putting some grease around the top of the piston head to prevent debris from getting into the rings? Id convert to e85 if we had it. Corn gas is hard to come by in my area... non existent to be exact.

What about leaving the carbon, and having a tiny bit higher compression because of it?