Slickdvl

Attempting to clean intake valves - did the passenger side - but need to close the valves on driver side - what do need to crank to turn the driver side closed? Big round pulley looking thing in I’m front under the water pump?

deilenberger

Yup. That's called the crankshaft. There is a nut in the middle of it. Turn (from memory) clockwise facing the front of the engine. If you overshoot it - keep going clockwise until you come up on it again. It will turn much easier if all the plugs are out of the engine.

Quadcammer

How did you do the passenger side without turning the crank?

Slickdvl

The valves were already closed - I used wire bristle brushes and a screwdriver to get the large chunks off. Then I used air to get out some of the funk that accumulated. I bought GDI cleaner that I may spray as well and then let it dry out or spray air in again to get it out.
anyone know what it’s called so that I can get the right socket in there to turn it? I’ll look up on alldata

hotrod2448

They don't all open and close at the same time just because they are on one side of the block or another. You should have had to rotate the motor to do the passenger side as well. You might want to pump the brakes on this project, this is an area that can get expensive quick if you mess something up.

Slickdvl

I can assure you they were closed - I can take pictures.
i had one on the driver side that was open - it’s easy to tell it’s open

Quadcammer

So you are saying every intake valve on the passenger side was closed without turning the crank and only 1 drivers side valve was open at the same time?

One hell of an odd engine you got there.

jtakhtalian

This makes no sense. Time to remove the plugs and drop a scope into the cylinder to make sure you didn't get any chunks of carbon inadvertently fall in there. If there is, your easiest bet would be to grab a large compressor and a very narrow air nozzle to try and blow whatever is in there out before you start your engine. If you do that, make sure to move the air nozzle to the near bottom (or close to the top of the cylinder if that helps illustrate what I'm saying) before pulling the trigger. Leave it there for a while and then start moving the nozzle around to agitate the entire space. Keeping the nozzle close to the bottom makes sure that the air is being blown up and out of the cylinder as opposed to circulating in there if the nozzle was placed too high near the plug entrance. Believe me it's not the end of the world. Go see how some of these guys are tapping new spark plug holes into the heads of the old 1999-2003 Ford Triton engines where the plugs would blow out due to crappy engineering while the heads are still attached to the engine. You literally have to drill into the head and allow the aluminum to fall into the cylinder, only to be blown out later.

Slickdvl

I havent gotten to the rest of the driver side - only the front one. Passenger sides were closed for sure.

Slickdvl

Ugh - there’s definitely small small particles, not chunks in there on that first one. I used some gdi cleaner on the brush which helped soften up the carbon - so no chunks. The chunks seemed to be towards the back cylinders - at least on passenger side. I’ll try and take some pictures. Again - passenger sides are closed
So I definitely shouldn’t start the car til I get the carbon out of the open cylinder?

jtakhtalian

Yes. Don't start the car. Carbon is tougher than you think. No sense in risking damaging cylinder walls. And if enough small bits actually make it out and into your catalytic converters, you could have another expensive repair.

Slickdvl

Can I use a small handheld vacuum and attach it to some long tube and try to vacuum it out?

Example pic of front passenger side - I’ll take more pics of the other valves when I get a chance - watching my kids and two pups at the moment

jtakhtalian

That looks like a closed valve to me from that angle. I guess you could try. I wouldn't trust just dropping a vacuum tube down into the cylinder and assume it's all gone without a borescope to double check. It's a super cheap investment off of Amazon. Like $25. It will connect to your phone via Bluetooth and some of the newer ones are pretty good in terms of clarity and resolution. My hesitation here is I don't know how much, or even if any, pieces of carbon made it into the cylinder. You say you used GDI cleaner and a wire brush. Perhaps you were able to dissolve enough of it that it just turned into a liquified slurry. If so, then maybe it'll just burn off in the combustion process and not affect a thing.

Slickdvl

8 driver side closest to firewall

Slickdvl

As you can see the majority of the are closed - even the driver side ones that aren’t cleaned are closed.
you can see the one that’s cleaned out is open - possibly one in the back passenger looks open in pics but didn’t appear open when I had my head looking inside with light - and I was able to pull the chunks out
Ordered a 5mp borescope to be on the safe side