At last, someone on youtube who does this without damaging valve stem in chuck, or valve face- good tips and now I can do my own valves without the risk of damage- excellent video
last time i did this i used a brass wirebrush to remove the worst crap and the i used scotch brite. the brass is so soft that it dont do any damage. worked great!
Great way to clean up the valves. I never thought of using the drill press but that makes it a whole lot easier than using a handheld drill. Thanks for taking the time to put this together and share it with us.
I actually just did this today before I ran in to this video. It works really well. you can also use tape to protect the guide on the ends just put 3-4 wraps and don't go crazy with overthinking in the drill.
And here I have, all of this, and now I can save some time and money. So simple, but then again high tech. Thanks a million fella! I have liked and subscribed…
hey, big thanks for the video! i want to learn to work on engines so im trying to bring back an old decrepit motorcycle and this worked wonders! my valves look beautiful now. I almost sanded them since that's the method of the first video that came up when i searched... that would have been sad lol
I have some CRC throttle body and air intake cleaner. It melted away the carbon on my BMW throttle body. I blew cylinder 3 and 4 head on my vintage VW engine last week, so I will use that with a bit of scotch brite pad to do my valves before I very lightly lap them with grinding past and tool. The CRC is strong and works very well.
I thought the same thing. Never like to see them dangling down on chains. Personally I glue a magnet to the drill press and always return the chuck key to the magnet.
Thanks. Tide and gasoline is interesting, I haven't heard of that mix before. Did you find out about it from somewhere else or did you come up with it yourself?
use the same procedure for lapping the valve. put valve in the head, install rubber hose, put drill on valve stem and work it back and forth in the guide.
Just little tip you don't have to keep valves in order when doing valve job their all the same size dimensions etc. Just like with push rods rockers etc.
Did a 24 hour soak of my valves in acetone and it did nothing to the carbon build up. It took green scotch bright to get the carbon to come off. Not sure how anyone is doing this with fine pads.
Never found this to work on hardened carbon and scale. Also, scotch brite sands away both the carbon and the valve metal. Better to use a wire wheel. The wire wheel bristles are softer metal than the valve so it will not abrade the valve metal.
Why not soak the valves in WD/Seafoam/ PBBlaster (up to the carbon line) BEFORE putting them in the drill? The Sweet Project Cars guy has a neato combo of a penetrating oil like WD, transmission fluid and Dawn dish soap that would probably work great as a pre-soak too: soften the caked-on carbon before scrubbing, then a quick rinse with carb cleaner.
I should have pointed out that I did give these a quite a bit of carb cleaner beforehand, however it was a spray and not so much letting them soak. Soaking likely would make removing the remaining carbon easier, the one slight potential headache with soaking is mixing up the valves. They should all theoretically be identical but with a high mileage engine like this one (350k miles) I wanted to be certain each valve went back to where it was removed from in case of irregular wear, which is why you see them stuck into the cardboard box like that. You could likely soak them one at a time to get around this, or use some sort of label on the stem.
@@Canuckrz stem labelling FTW! Individual soaking would take too long - you’d only (might) need a couple pints of solution in a bath receptacle 2-3” deep to submerge what needs it in this case - aluminum cake pan or muffin tin perhaps? Next time...
I'm wanting to clean up some valves on an old 350 head, and also where they seat. Would I need to lap the valves after cleaning? I was wanting to do a soak in heavier duty simple green for the head to try and clean out the ports. If they don't look too bad I might just live and let be I guess. @@Canuckrz
@josephashe If you make sure to organize the valves so they go back in the same spot they came from then lapping is not strictly necessary. Poking them into a cardboard box works well for this. That being said if you have the heads torn all the way down lapping doesn't take long to do and provides peace of mind.
I personally have always used green pads for cleaning the valves up. It helps get the carbon deposits off quicker with less work and it would take an awful lot of time to actually remove any significant material with it
Could it be an idea to use an gray scotch brite as well after for a finer finish? I converted my engine to propane..so what I'll remove now won't come back
Its worth experimenting with, worst case scenario you're out a few bucks on a scotchbrite pad. I'd just be careful to not get something too coarse that could screw up your sealing surface.
only certain performance valves have these and sodium melts at 98C. it will be solid when you're handling it. as long as you don't drill into the valve stem you don't ever have to worry about the sodium contacting oxygen
you are going about the wrong way the only part that needs cleaning is bottom side so you have clean bothat the same time to for a sealits called lapping with a compound use asmall wood hand drill is all that is needed you take a compression test before dissasimling the valves polish the re take compression test put aspoon of oil in plug hole see if it helps compressionif oil helps the ring need replacing valves are ok
If carbon sits on the valves it can 1. Make it harder for them to cool off, leading to an overheating issue in the head. And 2. Cause airflow to get all wonky before or after it leaves the cylinder, leading to a whole mess of problems. That's all he is cleaning here. I can bet that he lapped the valves afterwards. But you do need to clean them to this extent on a fresh rebuild. Otherwise you are just shooting yourself in the foot.
I figure I’m out of luck but what if the valve stem that runs in the valve guide is rusty? Is there anything I can do for that or is it to just replace them
Agree, but It is if you have no choice to pull your engine out and apart. I melted a hole in one of my Aluminum VW beetle cylinder heads, so I will be doing mine.