Cleaning carbon deposits

[OldMercs]

Rebuilding the heads on my 450sel and am looking for an easier way to clean out the nasty carbon desposits in the exhaust ports. Right now I'm scraping and wire-brushing, is there an easier way?

[Emmerich]

Originally Posted by OldMercs

Rebuilding the heads on my 450sel and am looking for an easier way to clean out the nasty carbon desposits in the exhaust ports. Right now I'm scraping and wire-brushing, is there an easier way?

Go to a boat store and buy a few cans of Quicksilver Power Tune. Spray into intake per instructions. Let soak. When you start car, run down road at high RPM to blow out gunk. I would not do this on a car with a cat though. Not sure if it would plug a muffler, since this stuff was designed to decarbon outboards.

[Tomguy]

I did that in my intake manifold... soaked it in laquer thinner. Took quite some time and toothbrushing, but it all came out.

[lunchbox]

Seafoam!

trust me, I use it on all my cars, it works.

You can find it in any decent auto parts store

[OldMercs]

Today I bought a gallon of carburetor dip and two (better) spiral twisted wire brushes. The carbon is pretty caked on so first I'll try the brushes and if I get tired of that I'll place the valves back in and let the carb stuff go to work. I'm in California so we can't get the really good cancer-causing stuff any more, I don't know how well this new stuff works. My dad had a can of the original Brite-Dip stuff when I was a kid, I probaby took five years off my life using it to strip paint off my Hotwheels. There's also some stuff called Piston Kleen, I'd have to mail order this and wait for it to show up so didn't go that route, has anyone else used it?

[Alastair]

IF you have the time, I find BioDiesel works quite well, but you need to leave the parts such as pistons soak for a week or so. It softens up the black coke and strips off the nasty brownish varnishes pretty well. A quick scrub with a scouring-pad (the plastic type) works wonders....

Only problem is, it just takes TIME!