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Clean carbon from piston head

Xorbex

Xorbex

New member
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'd probably just leave it alone. You don't want anything like steel wool leaving small burrs behind even if using a shop vac. I guess you could use some kind of spray cleaner on it designed to remove carbon and then vac it out.
 


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.

Bristle-Discs-300.jpg
 
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.
 


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.
 
Frosty said:
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.
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No way. Really? Are you running an EGR?

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


Fivefingerdeathpunch said:
Always a personal opinion here, I'll continue to use them.
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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use the bristle discs but GM does not endorse the use of "these products or similar" i believe in 01 they released a superseded TSB that banishes the bristle discs to non internal engine/trans work as the brillo pads before....turns out they were still destroying engines.....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/bulletins/General-Motors-Position-Surface-Conditioning-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.
 
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.
 
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