If you're on the fence about having your intake valves cleaned or doing it yourself, defintiely get it it done.

I did mine over the weekend and there was quite a bit of build up... Car only has 37,018 miles on it. Amazed by the amount of crap that I pulled out of each port...

Believe it or not, the car idles much more smoothly and feels to accelerate a bit more smoothly as well. Next up is a Powell PCV upgrade.

Before:



During (Soaking with B12):


After:

 

Did you walnut blast it or just soak it in B12? Also, what is B12? Never heard of it.

 

So you pulled the manifold to do this?

 

Can I just pour down B12 into the intake?

 

How did you go about cleaning them? Materials used?

 

Sub'd!

 

How to please..

 

Tyler u should come over and help me clean mine up theyre pretty bad... I have 63k on the clock

 

I can only imagine how bad mine are.... 92K

 

GM replaced the whole head under warranty for me had an issue other than just coking though. Guess the one of the valve seats was broken.

 

great work T man. Email me for your PCV upgrade, yours is speshul lol

 

Sub'd

 

Can I has speshul pcv too lol

 

only it you are as smart as T man.

 

Dang

 

No sir, by hand. B-12 is a fuel system cleaner that is made by Chemtool. Pretty gnarly stuff

Correct. Quite the process. Easy but none the less, a process.

That's a big time NO. It's highly flammable.

I used:

A universal gun cleaning kit (I used the WHOLE kit aside from one giant brass brush because I'm **** like that)
A roll of shop towels (the blue kind)
A large can of compressed air (two would've been better)
A vaccuum (fabricated my own little deal that reached into each port)
Cotton swabs
Assortment of picks (be extremely careful not to dig into the valves/valve seats. Extreme caution is advised with these)
One can of B-12 Chemtool cleaner
One can of carb cleaner (verification purposes only)
Package of nitril gloves
Helps to have a handy trash by you at all times

Pull the intake manifold (disconnect/unfasten anything attached to it and loosen up the throttle body coupler) and use some painters tape on the HPFP port that is exposed. Also be sure to cover your lower charge piping.

Verify that the valves are closed by spraying some carb cleaner in the ports to see if it pools up. You should have at least 3 ports where both intake valves are closed. In my case, #4 was open and the rest were closed. Use a shop towel and stuff it into the open port to ensure nothing gets in.

Once you've verified that all is well, take a shop towel and divide it in two and use each to soak up the carb cleaner (most should evaporate).

Use a funnel and poor the B-12 into the ports, completely submerging them until you can no longer see the ports/valves/stems. Again, use extreme caution with this stuff and be sure to have plenty of ventilation.

Let the B-12 sit in the port for at least 1 hour but preferrably overnight.

After letting the valves "soak", grab your gun cleaning kit and pull out the handle and brass brush. Gently go to town on the surfaces of the ports (top and bottom) and use the shop towels to soak up the B-12 fluid in the ports. Be sure to utilize a long pair of needle nose pliars when removing the towels as you really don't want this stuff getting on you (ate through my gloves at the finger tips). You'll probably do this 2-3 times on each valve and what you're left with is nothing pretty

I used the long cotton swabs to first pushing things around and get it all into one part of the chamber and soak up any left over fluid. I then used a 90* pick to gently clear away the gunk at the front of the seat/valve and move it to the rest of my "pile". I then worked the 90* pick to the back of the vavle and used it to gently remove gunk from the stem.

Then came the vacuum cleaner and can of air. I sucked up everything I could and then used a can of air to blast away the stubborn gunk. A tip, be sure that you've got a shop towel stuffed in the other chamber as you don't want stuff you're blowing out of one to move to the other.

After this point, the gun cleaning kit, a straight pick and a 45* angled pick come into play. I mentioned the brass brushs but there are cotton type material rollers as well. Use the cotton type roller to grab as much gunk as you can by working it in and around the valve. Then use the straight and 45* angled picks to gently clean around the seat and the valve itself, using the can of air/vaccuum at your own discretion.

Once you get to a point where all of the gunk is taken care of, use the brass brush to gently clean the stem and the valve itself. Once again, vacuum and can of air once complete.

You'll have enough materials in the gun kit to only need to use one roller per port.

I'm extremely maticulous so I made sure to use the can of air and vacuum a lot to ensure that I not only got all of the gunk/coking but to also ensure that there weren't any bristles from the brass brushes left behind.

Rinse and repeat for each valve. Once you're ready to do the "open" port that you covered up initially, you'll want to either find the crank bolt and rotate the motor over until the valves close or you can toss the car in 4th gear and give her a nice push. I put her in 4th and pushed.

When it was all said and done, I took my time and it took me roughly 10 hours total.

LOL as many times as you've had your head/intake off, you never took a look?

Hah! Thanks Mr. Powell. Saving money to get it done! Wife is on board but home improvements keep taking precedent...
Soon!

 

No I know mine are pretty gunked up... Seafoam isnt doing anything, and if I pull the head its getting sent out to be ported

 

valves are soaking

 

Photos

 

Just cleaned my intake valves and changing the injector seals but I was lost on how the **** tool worked but big thanks to FF_ace for walking me through it and T-Man for the how to!

 

That's one long ass soak.

 

Nice work!


no problem bud.

hope you fellas took before and after pictures!

 

let the valves soak over 12hrs. my picks were a lil short but able the the job... tried to get pics but came out poor on my camera...

no problem glad I could help

 

I took pics but idk how to put up pictures with my iPhone

 

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