street car gone road race

So I wanted them to be my track wheels as fitment is better and they only require a 3mm spacer to clear my stoptechs. BUT if I go polished lip I’ll keep them as my street setup and run my other wheels as track only since those are not fancy. I really like the polished lip but as you see by my carI’m not one for exterior mods and the “look at me” factor but damn those wheels look so much more expensive then they are

 

Polished lip looks like school bus wheels

 

I’m thinking the matte grey. Simple. Clean. No issues tracking them

 

I vote the grey as well. Black chrome and red might be a bit much imo

 

Thanks for the input!! I too thought it might be a little much. Never had any bling bling wheels before though. But that’s another vote for matte grey!

 

If I was going to go for a more kind of flashy look I would go for an anodized color or possibly a black chrome for your color car which is somewhat of a shiny grey lol

 

Time for something a little different....

this is my first time doing this on my own. i had a hand in building my srt4 motor 8+ years ago now so ive seen the inner workings of a motor before. nothing here is overly complicated and by tearing it down myself ive taken a lot of the mystery out of it all. Talk about learning experience.

finally started tear down on that motor i bought. pretty clean inside, but here are my findings and my process for what ill be doing and how.

Part 1 here shows me just separating the head, taking a look into the cylinders, and thats about it. i have a second video of the head coming apart, having springs swapped, then reassembly.

my plan is to have the head torqued back onto the block by the end of this weekend, with the oil pan sealed and ready to go. with a 3 day weekend a head it should be no problem. Still need to order some CS/Overspeed injector seals to get those reinstalled but ill do that last just before swap time.

so here we see how i kept the buckets organized. intake buckets went into one bag, exhaust into another.
because this motor is low mileage i do not want to fuck around with having to adjust lash or any of that. This way i will be putting the buckets back exactly where they came from. Then i can confirm lash is in spec(hopefully) and thats it. this picture was taken so i could see what bucket came from where based on the size stamped into it. pretty simple i think.


originally i was going to just install the springs/retainers with the head still on the block but my buddy pointed out how nasty the intake valves were so he suggested a full tear down to clean those up. Still undecided how to clean those valves(B12 chemtool is not available here). The carbon isnt TOO bad but id like to start fresh.


not terrible? a lot of it crumbled off with just m fingers but i still need something to really clean em up.



exhaust side of the head with new crower springs and GM retainers


Here is video 1 in what will definitely be a series. Just me pulling apart a perfectly good motor lol. Part 2 coming eventually will include me swapping the springs, and fucking around trying not to lose any keepers getting the retainers back on. that sucked lol

 

You should be able to soak the valves in carb/choke cleaner. Let them sit for a minute or two, wipe off whatever crap gets loose, and then scrub the rest of the junk off with a softish wire brush.

Thats what I would do anyway, and then to be on the safe side, lap the valves over again to smooth out any imperfections.

 

So I have seafoam available which comes up when searching for carb cleaner so maybe I’ll give that a try? My buddy also suggested wire wheel but that worried me. Thought it might damage a valve but I guess wire brush/wire wheel it is. I’ll give that a go on Friday and hopefully I can get them clean. I’m going to lap them just before reassembly. Just to be sure the seal is good.

 

Seafoam might work, you should be able to use throttle body cleaner also. Hopefully Canada stocks that somewhere.

The wire wheel is not a bad idea, so long as the bristles are not too hard.

If you cant find anything soft enough, you can get creative and mount each valve at a time on your power drill and spin them over a heavy shoe/boot brush after the soak. Unless for some reason Canada doesnt have those either.

 

lol. I can definitely get some carb cleaner.
I guess the process should go something like

- soak valve for 5 minutes
- scrub valve with softest possible wire wheel/wire brush
- final brushing and cleaning with a shoe/boot brush
- lap valve
- reinstall

this should be about it?

 

Use gasoline or kerosene. Or buy GM top end cleaner and just fill a metal container then soak. Avoid a wire brush in any way unless you're using a plastic bristle brush.

 

Canadian Tire does sell intake valve cleaner it'll probably work just fine, also Walmart does have b-12 chemtool when I was looking at Walmart.ca looking for myself. That being said soaking them in gasoline and following the procedure by the post above should work just fine too

 

I was thinking of just taking a walk down the automotive “cleaner” section of Canadian tire and seeing what they have but if gasoline will work just as well I might just do that

 

Thanks for the input. Interesting to say not to use a wire wheel. There’s another member here who cleaned up his valves with a wire wheel and hasn’t run into any problem yet

 

You can but you have to be careful as anything that can put a deep scratch could cause leak down or an oil leak.

I would get some painter's tape, label every valve such as E1-1 and E1-2 at the very top of each valve and just get a metal tray with cleaner filled up enough to get right above the carbon level. Soak them all and every 30 minutes or so come back with a plastic brush and scrub. You said you were going lap the valves with is a really good practice (GM doesnt require it on their cars when I replace them under warranty but I still do it anyways) so you should be fine.

If a wire brush is needed use something like brass or copper but would try a plastic brush first.

As mentioned in a post about freeing up carbon from rings this stuff works amazing to dissolve carbon. Way better than gasoline or kerosene.

 

thanks for that input.

unfortunately it looks like I cant get the x66p cleaner. not available on amazon Canada and a quick google brings nothing up. i think ill have to soak the valves, check them out, and resoak if needed.

i was planning to label the valves and soak them all at once, just to speed up the process. with the amount of carbon on those valves i dont think it should be too bad to clean them up. Plastic brush definitely sounds safer to me. will have to visit the store this week and take a look at the brush options.

 

Well, the motor is assembled now. finished everything this weekend as i planned. good progress so far!

step one of reassembly was to clean these valves and let me tell you, nothing labeled "removes carbon" "carbon cleaner" works. at all. like 0. not sure what kinda carbon they test these chemicals on but they dont work for shit. i wasted 25$ on brake clean and seafoam. it was a bit of an experiment, i wanted to see which would do what as they both claim to clean/remove carbon.


seafoam on the left, non-flammable(doesn't evaporate as quick) brake clean on the right. valves soaked for 1 hour.


seafoam did nothing. literally nothing. brake clean actually started to work a little as i could see the carbon thinned out a bit. either way it wasnt happening quick enough for me and i was dead set on getting this done.

Friday i spent 9 hours in the shop cleaning, cleaning every millimeter of RTV off the block, off my timing cover, off my oil pan. many visits to the parts washer(such a useful thing). Before i went on my cleaning rampage i had to find something that would actually work for my valves.

Behold, the worlds best kept $6 secret.


soaked the valves for an hour in this shit, and the carbon was literally JUMPING off the valves. little rubbage with a mild scotch brite pad and some spinning in a drill and the valves were mint after an hour. this shit is SERIOUS. it just smells like pure chemicals, its hard to breath, its bothers your eyes, but it fucking works and the can is still half full. damn.


really nasty stuff, comes out like a foam, turns into a gross goop. you can see the final product in this photo also


CLEAN. good to go.


next we lap, and not the kind of lapping we usually talk about in this thread

simple process, nothing to it. takes some time but not really much. all valves were done on the intake side. exhaust side i didnt touch, just swapped he springs.

Done. getting 32 keepers uninstalled/reinstalled was terrifying. theyre tiny, they go everywhere, they cost like 9$ cad each, and they take forever to get. thank fuck i didnt lose any. its all i was thinking about.


after this, i bathed the head in the parts washer, then again with brake clean and onto the block it went.
The motor had ST head studs in it, but i replaced those with mazda OEM studs. good enough for the power im after. Torqueing was simple, but sketchy. these are stretch bolts so they only call for about 35ftlbs followed by TWO 90degree turns. thats the scary part. but got it done, onto installing buckets, cams, and cam caps.


heres how i kept EVERYTHING organized. also noted which bucket came from where so reassembly was quick and painless.




timing tool installed after buckets and cams went in.



installing the friction washers SUCKED. i was sketched out the whole entire time. got them on without too much drama, and without touching them directly on the flat surface so that was the goal and it was achieved. guess we'll see if they hold or if im doing a new build next year

after timing was done it was a quick spin of the crank to make sure nothing meets in the middle...and nothing did. so WE GOOD. WE DID THIS. I did this lol.
timing procedure was fairly painless, between using the manual, common sense, youtube, and @JohnnyTightlips thread for some final reassurance it was smooth sailing. really took the mystery out of timing this motor. With the cam plate and the crank locking pin its pretty simple! the real key is to leave the gears loose until you release the tensioner. then you can torque the cams.



Also took the time to WELD my crank pulley. there are reports of the timing teeth slipping in relation to the pulley and that sounds like hell to diagnose soo....yea. welded that up.

and this is where we leave it. i have some great build footage im still working on editing and whatnot but yea motor is buttoned up valve cover to oil pan now. just needs accessories and thats about it. i need to get my injectors cleaned still, as well as some CS or overspeed seals. plan is to begin swapping in December and be ready for first start on new years eve. Lets see if i can make that happen.

 

Video number 2. disassembly of the head, messing around with springs retainers and keepers!

 

Video number 3. How I cleaned my valves, what I used, the process, and some valve lapping!