cleaning soot on pistons.

[Badger90]

hi all

sunday im taking the head off my 200tdi defender so i can get it preshure tested and skimmed on monday and back to college that night..

while iim waiting for monday to come.. i would like to clean the soot on the cylinder. but i know that the heat exchanges that its not a easy job to do!

does anyone have any tricks of the trade for the this job?

cheers

sam

[steve200TDi]

Well if your getting the cylinder head skimmed I'm guessing you'll be stripping the head as it will need to be cleaned to get rid of all the swarf after it is skimmed. Then you can clean and lap all the valves in, make sure you label all the valves and springs to there corresponding hole. The valves will take up most of the combustion chamber and beings it is flat, the rest of the carbon should just scrape off. When I say 'scrape', gentle scrapping is needed as you do not want to mark the cylinder head. Also scotchbrite is also good to use to clean back to a shinyish finsh and to remove the little bits of carbon.

Steve

[reb78]

Might be useful:

http://www.lro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45536

[mike4444244]

I find petrol or brake cleaner works well, you'll probably find that if you ask nicely at the place where they are skiming it they will put them through their industrial parts washer. Last time i stripped an engine (a V8) I took all the bits to the local engine reconditioners and they charged me £10 to wash them and they came up far cleaner than I could have managed, all in about 25mins

no brainer really, I don't like elbow grease!

Mike