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Joe Gearin wrote:I'd love to see the look on my Mom's face if she found a cyl. head in her dishwasher.......man, she got off so easy!
ok, no she didn't.....
Haha! Colleen was out of town until 12:30 that night, and the head came out of the dishwasher about 11:15. I already had a load of dishes going by the time she made it home, so no one was the wiser!
sobe_death wrote:Anyone ever seen a hopeless carbeurator cleaned with Pine-Sol? They look brand new from an overnight soaking. That's probably what I would use as my cleaner for a cylinder head...
I've got a few things I'm going to try tonight on the aluminum coolant flanges that go with the head tonight, and I might just add that to the list.
Interesting to hear about the 22r heads that get ruined by cleaning. I think toyota might have had some issues with casting porosity/inclusions because the cylinder head on my 22re has rotted out either due to bad coolant, ground, electrolysis, or something.
I have a crusty carboned up head on my punky buellster and I tried to clean and scrape it off but I think I'm just going to let the machinist bead blast it and be done with it.
I tried the old dishwasher trick one time when I was home alone for a few hours. I run it with my parts in there. Get it out and back to the garage. Check the dishwasher - it looks clean inside. Put the dirty disheback in the dishwasher that I had stacked up on the counter. The parts got a little cleaner, but nothing spectacular and not worth trouble I would've gotten in if caught.
Later, when the wife comes home, she happens to notice that the dishwasher is warm. "Oh, you ran the dishwasher! So these are clean?"
"Nope- those are dirty."
"Why is the dishwasher warm?"
It was a narrow escape.
When I worked in a machine job shop, we used a product called Varisol. Awsome stuff worked fast no rinsing, no rust.
At home I use what my Uncle Bob (Dealership ford Mechanic for 40 years) used.
Diesel fuel, if I want it to be very clean I follow up with Dawn dish soap and water.
I have seen the results from boiling carbs in lemon juice and water, BEAUTIFUL.
Diesel fuel or kerosene work great. I use kero in my parts washer with good results even on heavily caked parts.
Last night, Colleen had a class until 7:30, so I resumed my top secret cleaning stuff using basic kitchen equipment experiment. So that leads me to...
Method 3: Boiling in water and lemon juice.
So as I was making dinner, I put a four quart pot on the stove with water, 1/2 cup of lemon juice, four cam caps (from the head that had previously been through step one and two), two coolant flanges (that had also been through step one and two), and a throttle body that had not been touched, as a control to see if the previous steps had any impact on this one. I boiled them for about a half hour, then rinsed the parts in cool water while rubbing them with my fingers.
The Verdict: It worked pretty well. Not perfect, but the best so far. The cam caps that originally had oil stain, then a dark gray stain from the purple power, look brand new. The throttle body looks pretty good, but it didn't do much for the caked on grease. If I had blasted it with carb cleaner then boiled it I imagine it would have looked pretty much perfect. The biggest surprise was the steel (possibly anodized) brackets and linkage on the throttle body look brand new. The coolant flanges came out OK at best. It didn't touch the mixture of oxidation and coolant crud that accumulates at the hose ends of the flanges, but it did take the gray discoloration from the purple power off.
Just wanted to say that I appreciate your efforts to debunk internet mythology with scientific experimentation! If you had some pictures, it'd be even better, but you already knew that.
Bryce
+1. Currently contemplating some combination of 55 gallon drum, sterno, water, and a few gallons of lemon juice.
There will be pics to come. Although my better half had the camera with her this weekend, so I don't have any pics between step 1 and 2. I will get some pics of very fresh and clean cam caps on a stained and sort of cleaned head, with the only difference being the lemon juice boil.
Sounds like you may want to try one of the citrus based cleaners then..
I use Purple Power a lot for degreasing steel parts--big bucket, add PP, throw parts in for several days. Strips paint, grease, etc.
In reply to DILYSI Dave:
Instead of sterno why not a water heater element? They run about $10, and another ten for the threaded bung they screw into. 
I used to use this stuff from Harbor Freight with great success.
I would put a gallon of the degreaser and four or five gallons of water in my parts washer tank and let cylinder heads soak for a couple of days, and they'd come out looking pretty much new.
Wally wrote:In reply to DILYSI Dave:
Instead of sterno why not a water heater element? They run about $10, and another ten for the threaded bung they screw into.
Damn - that's tempting. I can get new 55 gallon drums cheap. A bit of welding, a bit of wiring, and bam - a heated soak tank. If I'm going to involve electricity, I might as well look at something to agitate it as well...
Wally said BUNG... huuhhuhuhuhhhuhuuhhhhhuuuuuhuhuhuhuhuhuuuhuhuhh
I once built a dunk tank for cleaning small parts and attached the parts basket, via a long arm, to a wiper motor and arm for agitation. It would lift it up, and down all day. It worked very well.
That's a good idea! Would have been even better if he would have gotten a tote big enough to actually fit the head in. I would like to see some after pics though.
16vCorey wrote:There will be pics to come. Although my better half had the camera with her this weekend, so I don't have any pics between step 1 and 2. I will get some pics of very fresh and clean cam caps on a stained and sort of cleaned head, with the only difference being the lemon juice boil.
Make sure you HIDE those pics, or your wife doesn't ever see them here. Don't want the missus seeing you givin' the ol thumbs up pulling an SBC head or something out of her dishwasher.
mndsm wrote:16vCorey wrote:There will be pics to come. Although my better half had the camera with her this weekend, so I don't have any pics between step 1 and 2. I will get some pics of very fresh and clean cam caps on a stained and sort of cleaned head, with the only difference being the lemon juice boil.
Make sure you HIDE those pics, or your wife doesn't ever see them here. Don't want the missus seeing you givin' the ol thumbs up pulling an SBC head or something out of her dishwasher.
She'd be more or less OK with it now, following the no harm, no foul logic. Now getting her to agree with it before hand would have been a TOTALLY different story. She's always so skeptical of my methods, thinking that I'm going to destroy things. It's actually surprising how rarely that happens.
Any update? Hopefully you have lived to tell the tale.
Bryce
So, you're dead then? Note to self: Don't get caught with car parts in the dishwasher!
Bryce
Haha, I'm alive and well, just haven't had any time to work on the head. Now that the Chumpcar race is over, I should have some time to get back to finishing projects around the house, this being one of them. Updates will come soon!
DILYSI Dave wrote:
Interesting. I'm sure it agitates enough to do something, though I'm not convinced that it would do the cavitation thing that makes a true ultrasonic cleaner work...
This in turn led me to some googling for DIY ultrasonic cleaners, with limited success. Guess researching sufficiently powerful transducers and a cheap means of driving them goes on the list of things to rotate in when I'm procrastinating something else...
