Intake valves carbon removal choices.

Long time Ferrari enthusiast Marcell stopped posting on Fchat after being attacked and questioned about 0052. Carl Fung stopped posting to the FerrariList for the same basic reasons. I can list others who gave up and went away. Shortly after I came here there was a battle raging between two posters over a set of coroded cylinder heads. They are both gone. Every darned thread that mr K posted to, he was attacked until he finally gave up. Ed Gault attempted to make some heavy duty timing belt sprockets to build long term reliability into the 308. After questions about warranteeing engines and liability, he gave up and left, and left the entire Ferrari community.

Sir, no one has attacked you with the emotion you have used to attack others. You come here asking questions, and when you dont get the answer you like, you attack and demean people. When has anyone called you anal retentive? Irrelevent? Having zero knowledge? Not one that I have seen. Maybe its spring, maybe its the world turned upside down, but I for one am getting tired of all this BS. I find myself staying away for days at a time, and more and more regretting ever opening up the damned website. Keep attacking everyone, your making a lot of friends here.

 

Oh wait just a damned minute. Scant amount of evidence? Lets see. Your car is some oddball that has different valves than anything else on the planet? Your car has some different kind of deposits from any other car on the planet? Its got carbon on the fricken valves, just like every other 4 cycle engine in the world has ever had over the last 150 years. How is your "problem" different? You want to blast it out with media, go ahead. You want to put dry ice down there and chill the valve, possibly warping it, go ahead. I do know that very fine particles can collect between the valve and seat and become impossible to blow out with compressed air, but hey, what the hell do I know. Nothing, not a thing.

Want to know how much an engine can take? Ive seen an engine ran over 30 miles without any oil and still run for over a year after getting refilled. I had a friend who dropped all the carbon and gasket material from the intake manifold and head gaskets on a GM V8 down in the valley. He then washed it out with a garden hose. He took a pick and scratched out the garbage that was jammed in the rings, threw it together and drove it for years. I seen another guy pour water down a carb of a running engine and gas it and drown it out and gas it some more. It still ran. Hell, I seen motors pulled out of lakes that still ran after. Engines are tough. You can do a lot of abuse to them and they are plastic enough to take it. For a while. They also are all capable of breaking. They all can collect garbage in the ring grooves. They all can blow up. They all can drop a valve. Ive seen aircraft engines that ran and landed with whole cylinders blown off, missing the piston and having the rod smacking around bashing everything to hell. One particular Cessna that was offshore flew almost 200 miles inland to land after dropping a valve and bashing itself to death for an hour and a half. Ive seen diesel engines that threw a rod and blew out the side of the block, and kept running. One was a 149 series Detroit V16 in a Locomotive.

The point is that guys who are mechanics fix things the way they are meant to be fixed, and non-mechanics are always trying to find a way to cut corners. The correct way to fix your problem is to tear the motor apart. Anything else is at your own risk.

 

Artvonne has alot to say about real world practicalities of the engine world and is showing justified frustration about know it all's and do nothings who continue to pontificate and flame and drive away the real minds of Ferrari chat. Who can blame them? They put out bonifide, thoughtful and intuitive information only to be challanged at every turn no matter what they say.
I must say that I have thought of leaving for good myself because these pages have been diluted by more and more self appointed experts who feel safe behind their screens, not touchable while spewing forth reams of venom and clouding real exchange of information.

Enough of that! Tear you darn engine apart and mechanically remove the carbon and put it back together and then do something to prevent carbon from reforming on backs of valves, combustion chambers and in you ring lands.
What to do? At each fill up use one of the across the counter valve, injector and combustion chamber cleaners. There are many but one that comes to mind also provides upper cylinder lube as well is Lucas, listen boy's they are proven to work and I have seen the results from its use in torn down engines, have you? My two cents. Now all you keyboard jocky's get busy and find something wrong with that.

 

I am sorry but I really can't comment further on that post. It seems it is very presumptious, demeaning and down right rude. I would hate to cause further distress to the A S S H O L E that objected to it.

 

Artvonne was right to many posters without any substance. I am gone too.

 

Okay, let me venture into this.

I have used Sea-Foam to decarbonize 2 cars and my boat engine. I don't like putting things in an engine that just don't belong, however, short of pulling the engine apart to clean carbon deposits, this was recommended to me and it seemed to work.

Sea-Foam is a light penetrating oil that can be sprayed into the intake manifold. Spray it lightly into a warm engine while it is running and then heavier until the engine nearly stalls. If it does stall, let it sit for about 30 minutes. If the engine doesn’t stall, turn it off and wait about 30 minutes. Restart and run the RPMs up to about 1500-2000. There will be a bunch of white smoke coming out the exhaust. Don’t worry this is the light oil burning off and taking the carbon with it.

The way it was explained to me was the penetrating oil works into the carbon deposits. Then when burned off, the combustion loosens and dislodges the carbon so it can be blown out the exhaust.

I am just the messenger here. If you don’t believe in this, fine, don’t do it.

 

Point well taken, thanks for your response.

 

When I was little my dad would buy old cars and fix them up. SeaFoam wasnt around I dont think, but he would mix up a quart of some home brew kerosene, fuel oil, and automatic tranny fluid and pour it down thier throats. Smoked up the yard so thick Algore would have freaked out and fell over dead.

Thing is, it would actually take out the carbon from inside the combustion chamber, because fuel oil, kerosene or ATF, they all burn really hot, but it wont do a damned thing for the crap on the back of the valve. I used to get stuck with the job grinding that junk off on a bench grinder with a wire wheel. Its like fricken rock. Its basically coke deposits from the oil residue that got past the valve guide and burned away. Almost pure carbon, its very hard, very brittle, and very abrasive. I dont think silica sand or valve grinding compound would do any worse damage if it got into your motor. Thats why I think most of us are against trying to remove it off the valve in situ.

Water injection. Well, it dont burn. And as was pointed out elsewhere, its not in there long enough and there isnt enough energy available to break the molecule apart so it cant add oxygen to aid burning, so it comes out just like it went in, water. So whats it do? Well, if you remember physics, water is not compressible. If it gets into the combustion chamber, it takes up incompressible space. So it basically increases the available compression ratio and will continue to do so until you pour in so much it hydraulically locks up and bends the connecting rod or some other nasty event. But up to that point the more you add the more power you get, and it gets HOT! And in addition, it can turn to steam and give even more power. So its steam cleaning your combustion chambers while its giving you a boost. But it still wont clean the back of the valves. I dont even think there is anything you could soak them in that would remove carbon off the valves that wouldnt hust something else. Its like ceramic coated rock.

While the idea of using compressed air to blow material out of the port sounds logical, it doesnt work so well in reality. I dropped a small nut down a port once, and all the air did was make it fly all around in there wildly. But it never came out with air. Even blowing through a small tube extended down as far as possible made no difference. And again, while it seems logical that ever smaller particles will easily blow out, that to is not 100%. Finer grains will collect around the valve seat and all the air pressure or air flow in the world isnt going to move it. And the first time that valve opens its going inside your motor. In fact the very method of blowing air into the port could blow the valve open. Mark gave a figure of around 18 psi on the back of a QV intake IIRC. With 100+ psi in the port blowing around it would not be difficult to exceed 18 psi on the back of the valve. POOF! all that crap just went inside your engine.

 

Yes, it was used.. it was used because it was CHEAP.

It was used on cars that were having idle problems during the warranty.

The machines are LONG gone.

As far as it being fantastically effective, it was - it was fantasticlly effective
at postponing any real engine issues until the warranty was up. Which of
course was (and is) the point of any automotive OEM.

The only way to safely media blast a Ferrari (or any) engine in-situ is to use
dry-ice blasting. Still you will need to fanatically clean the intake bowls above
the closed valves to remove little bits of carbon that WILL NOT be your friend
should they find any way into the spaces twixt piston and cylinder wall.

Failing that, and if you are detail oriented - glass bead blasting each CLOSED
valve intake bowl whilst the others are taped off - followed by a careful
cleaning is possible.

Recommended - No

Sane - No

Possible - Yes.

Jim Conforti

PS: NOTHING but mechanical removal will work for carbon on the intake
valves. Anything strong enough to "dissolve" elemental carbon is either too
toxic for you to handle, or it's so corrosive that the block/valves will go first.

 

Glass bead blasting any aluminum eninge part is not a good idea. Fragments of glass cannot be removed from the aluminum by any cleaning method outside of prolonged engine use, which means the bearings will be toast in short order as the microscopic glass bits leech into your engine.

Ken

 

The Dave Bean Engineering Lotus catalog has quite a bit of technical information, and they stress NOT glass bead blasting aluminum engine parts. (Bean has quite an engineering department and they make race engines as well as rebuild Lotus street engines)

Also, the Wilkins book on Twin Cam Lotus engine has a few pictures of cam shaft bearing wear due to glass bead blasting. This book is the bible for Lotus TC engine rebuilding. Both are pretty informed sources IMO, so I take that advice seriously.

Ken

 

Well I'm a little intrigued with the dry ice blasting. I have no idea where you would get this media and how much one would need and how long one would have to work with it before it vanished.

Presumably, the dry ice is hard enough abrade the carbon deposits in situ. The temperature shock may aid in cracking the deposits as the temperature of CO2 is at least -110 F, at atmospheric pressure. It is highly unlikely that this temperature shock would warp any of the metal even if were in sudden and intimate contact with a block of C02. If it is hard enough to abrade the carbon deposits, then it is hard enough to pock mark the aluminum intake track. On the inlet side, this is not necessarily a bad result, as one wants a little texture for air flow reasons. It breaks up the boundary layer. Exhaust ports want a smooth, polished surface to discourage carbon adhesion. Carbon build up on the inlet tracts is not a concern because the temperatures during operation are much lower due to the cooling effects of the air-fuel charge.

I think the trick would be to deliver the dry ice blast media using a gun, where one wants it, with an extended nozzle. One would likely have to fabricate one to reach in far enough.

Assuming the inlet valve were closed, most of the carbon would be blown out the intake port opening during the blast operation and most of the rest could be vaccuumed out. Most of the remainder would be blown out the exhaust upon starting. The dry ice is not a concern as it will just evaporate as CO2 gas after several minutes.

Bill

 

Ken,

How would glass get from the intake bowl to a bearing? Assume that the
oil filtration circuit is working normally.

(BTW, you could just as easily use ceramic or plastic blast media - it all
depends on the exact alloy you're blasting, the pressure you're blasting at,
and the intended result/finish you want.)

Jim

 

Oil filters have a bypass valve for when the oil pressure differential across the media gets too high. It is a safety mechanism to prevent the media from failing completely. This valve will open when the filter is clogged or when the oil is too thick to go through the media fast enough - cold starts, cold mornings, high revs. If you pump a piece of anything when the bypass valve is open, onward to your bearings.