I took the time to clean out the intake ports over the weekend. Simply scraping out the carbon with a screwdriver, vacuuming, and using compressed air would have probably been sufficient cleaning to avoid engine damage from some of the crud getting into the cylinders. The buildup in the head was actually pretty gooey.
I wanted to get the ports as clean as I could get them without removing the head, so I did end up spraying oven cleaner in there in addition to scraping, vacuuming, and compressed air. I gave each cylinder 3 rounds of oven cleaner, rinse with water, shop vac, and compressed air. I also took UhOh's advice and used a bit of carb cleaner as well. I found that the oven cleaner was stronger in melting the carbon in large amounts, and the carb cleaner was helpful in removing some small bits as I was able to apply a direct short burst to eliminate them.
Here's some before/after pics I snapped while doing this. I didn't get a before pic for cylinder 1, but it looked the same as cylinder 4. 2 and 3 were the worst.
Cylinder 1
Some scraping:
After:
Cylinder 2
Before:
After:
Cylinder 3
Before:
After:
Cylinder 4
Before:
After:
This is what the EGR and IM looked like before:
I couldn't get the small layer of carbon off the valves, but I was certainly satisfied with how clean the ports turned out. The car has definitely recovered some lost power, especially above 2500 rpm. I plan on getting the dynamic egr tune from Malone to minimize the carbon build up in the future.
Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk