Thoughts on cleaning out soot in the intake ports

I have seen one person on here say their valves got bent from a piece of soot falling into the combustion chamber after cleaning out the intake manifold, but not the intake ports on the head. I replaced my intake manifold, but did not touch the intake ports due to fear of bending a valve.

I have a friend who cleaned his intake manifold and did the intake ports as well. He ended up bending a valve. (I know you can make sure the valve is closed when you do the cleaning, to stop soot from falling into the combustion chamber, but I didn't know that when I replaced the intake manifold)

My intake ports did have some soot in them.

How many other people have had problems with cleaning the intake manifold but not the intake ports? (So far I have just seen one person on here with a problem from that.)

I replaced my intake manifold 3 months ago and I have had zero problems.

Thanks!

I have, next time I will make damn sure to remove manifold!!!!! Ease of mind, plus it’s not that hard to remove manifold, better be safe than sorry. You know what I mean, mine has the egr delete with racepipe, so it will be a lot easier to clean. But since egr is off, I don’t have to worry about cleaning manifold again. Heading to Dallas tuesday, will let you know how it goes. Thanks for helping me set timing

i blindly cleaned things on my alh on my swap motor when deleting the egr stuff, engine out of car. i had written down in my notes to clean all that stuff, but read later about some horror stories. i just tried my best, definately took me forever to clean the intake manifold, and tried to take my time on the head side. use vacuum and the blowing of air all the time like people mention, just blowing air inside there won't get rid of all the stuff.

for mine the manifold had some of the crunchiest flakes that i could see acting like little rocks? on the head side mine weren't as clogged as others and the makeup was more like goop. not sure if the real wet stuff would pass better than the hard?

i only have like 30 miles on the car since i got it running, still need to tune and clean up some things, then i plan to daily drive it. i hope it goes well.

If the Intake Manifold is caked-up with crud, that crud will be bridged across the mating surface to the head. When you remove the Intake that bridge will be broken. The crud where the head and Intake mate is much more "crisp" and brittle due to the exposure of heat over many, many miles.

So, air being pushed by the Turbo down a nice clean Intake will have a tremendous amount of turbulence as it passes the ragged edges of the broken bridge of brittle crud as it passes into the Intake Ports in the head.

The best approach is to have the valve cover off so you will know without any doubt that the Intake Valve in the Intake Port on the head that you are working on is closed.

I use a "home made" pic and scraper to clean out the ports, as well as a mirror, light, shop vac and compressed air.

I've done several with excellent results many miles down the road.

Here are a few pics of a head that got screwed by what this topic is about.
(Keep in mind, the Intake was chemically cleaned in a tank... squeaking clean inside and out, but obviously the head was neglected.. ........)

i don’t know if i’m searching the wrong parameters, but since it applies here, does anyone have a bookmark for a good thread here describing how to do this cleaning/procedure? I think I’m thread-search disabled.

or perhaps the head part of this cleaning can’t really be described in any detail, or at least any more detailed than you just did.

-Intake off
-Valve cover off
-Observe closed Intake Valves (possibly 3 will be closed at the same time)

Tools
-Light
-Scraper of your choice
-Shop Vac with a modified suction hose (something small)
-Tape for holding down plastic, paper, etc., to deflect flying soot when use the next tool)
-Compressed air

Using the light, just begin scraping, gouging, etc., to loosen the carbon. It will break off fairly easy.... prolly a lot easier than you think. (that's why it necessary to get it out)

Then, use the shop vac to suck out the debris...... Repeat numerous times in the same port. Use the light and mirror to observe.

You will not get it shinny clean. But, if you persist, you'll be able to remove the vast majority of the carbon.

With critical things covered, use compressed air to blow out any remaining particles. I generally tape a piece of clear plastic over the edge of the head to keep the debris from blowing up into my face.

It's not rocket science! ........... just back breaking!

Andybees, I was saw your post elsewhere about this and I was trying to see if it had happened to anyone else. Surely there must be some folks that cleaned just the intake and not the intake ports. Just trying to figure out the chances of some crud from the intake ports messing up my engine.

Well, for the record, the pics are of the head off my brother's 03 Jetta. The event took place back in 2010. He purchased the car (will not disclose) from a reputable establishment with about 167k miles on it IIRC. About 11k miles later, the incident happened. I rotated the engine to TDC before disassembly. Everything lined up perfect. The Intake looked like it had been tank dipped.

The story gets long and deep ... but, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that chunks of debris from the head Intake Ports was at fault....

Thanks! So far no one else has chimed in saying they had this problem. Maybe it was a one-time thing.

Yeah, well, that mileage is consistent with about how far you typically get after a timing belt "incident" where the head is not removed and gone through after a valve impact has occurred as well.....

Not saying it couldn't have been some gunk from the intake port that broke off and stuck the valve open, resulting in the wreckage. But it's hardly an open-and-shut case.....

Genesis, and, I've seen trashed heads in less than 1500 miles after a TB incident.... lifter gives up and then the valve hits the piston ........

In this case, the TB was 67% in from a change at 100k according to the "reputable" establishment.

The Intake had been freshly cleaned ...... slick inside and out!

Also, if you notice, the broken wedged valve head is an Intake Valve. TB incidents involve Exhaust Valves more often than not by far. TB breaks, jumps teeth, teeth stripped, etc., and then piston advances on a closing Exhaust Valve. Remember, the pistons are always chasing the Exhaust Valves as they are closing on the exhaust stroke. And, look at the Intake Valve to the right ..... looks cocked a bit! There was zero damage to the pistons by Exhaust Valves!

Thus, I believe my assumption is fairly conclusive ...

Might well be, and yeah, I noted it was an intake. A hung valve from whatever cause jumped time, etc) all winds up in the same general place.... Just say I'm not sold on it being a conclusive cause although I do agree that it's certainly best practice to clean the ports in the head when you do the intake -- FOD into a cylinder is bad news no matter it comes from.

When I cleaned my manifold (3 years ago, no problems), I didn't do a proper job on the ports but did knock the lip off of the carbon buildup. I put a vacuum nozzle right there, and carefully used my finger to scrape the carbon out rather than in. I got it to the point where I was confident the lip wouldn't break off to be ingested later on and kill the head. It should quickly get covered in a new layer of oil and soot and remain stable.

I think this is an acceptable lazy solution. I also remember a thread where someone pulled the cover and tried to position the valves closed, but realized they screwed up on one so that carbon probably made it through to the cylinder. To be safe he pulled the head, and sure enough there were chunks everywhere. So there are risks however you do it.

Yes, there are risks for those who have no clue what they are doing and/or don't bother to prepare a good clean work area and procedure. Determining when an Intake Valve is closed is definitely not Rocket Science. Pulling the valve cover makes it almost impossible to screw up with respect to the status of the Intake valves.

As for the head disaster referenced above, I did set the engine at TDC to see if there was an issue with the Timing before disassembling. In fact, I documented everything, step by step with photos. But, other than sharing here, they were of no value as my brother would not pressure the place where he purchased the vehicle. It was a replacement for his 02 that T-boned a Ford Explorer. The 02 engine was used to replace this disaster.

Lastly, I'm sure there has been a lot of crud that made it thorough engines without any damage at all.

Yeah generally the way you're going to get that sort of catastrophic damage is when a piece of crud causes a valve to hang up, rather than getting "scrunched" between a CLOSED valve and a piston. Remember that the valve itself takes hundreds of psi of pressure when closed on compression and even more during combustion and it's against a nice, even seat. While it's likely possible to trash one from carbon that breaks off and gets into the cylinder that's a lot less likely to result in a catastrophic failure than if you have anything hang it up so it doesn't close all the way.

It's when it's open that there's a problem because all that's supporting the head is the stem and valves are not designed to take ANY load when not seated. Hang one up from any cause and when the piston comes up it gets whacked, the stem gets bent and compromised -- or breaks off right then and there -- and now you're screwed.

I did mine via AndyBees method... I think it turned out well enough.

This guy did a number on his - end product is pretty good. Post #39.
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?p=5213656#post5213656