my friend recently bought an LS longblock from a local junkyard. and when we got home, we opened up the valvecover, and there was a bunch of chunky oil build up of some sort?? it's all over the inside of the head. is there a way to clean this?

 

take it to a machine shop and have them hot tank it shouldnt cost much at all. should hot tank the block too, make sure everything is out of there

 

i hope you plan to rebuild this motor before installing it.

 

ha, remember your story. ..you had the sol right?^

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by chriskona &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">take it to a machine shop and have them hot tank it shouldnt cost much at all. should hot tank the block too, make sure everything is out of there</TD></TR></TABLE>
please do not have your friend hot tank the block or head...

they are made of aluminum and hot tanking the block and head will ruin them

 

oh really? i didnt even think of that. good to know LOL

what about a kerosene bath?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Nextelbuddy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
please do not have your friend hot tank the block or head...

they are made of aluminum and hot tanking the block and head will ruin them</TD></TR></TABLE>

Then how do people get the heads and block soo clean while doing a rebuild, they almost look like new when they come back from the machine shop?

 

Steam is one way.

 

i know kerosene works wonders with cleaning.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Nextelbuddy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
please do not have your friend hot tank the block or head...

they are made of aluminum and hot tanking the block and head will ruin them</TD></TR></TABLE>hm....how does it ruin them? Machine shop I know of hot tanks everything, they just dry it off right after then spray wd-40 on the sleeves and then dry it off again leaving a little moisture of wd-40 on it. I don't know about the head though.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Nextelbuddy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">they are made of aluminum and hot tanking the block and head will ruin them</TD></TR></TABLE>

Bull, Horse, and Monkeyshit. Hot tanking does not come even close to the temperatures that the block/head sees in normal use. Modern solvents are aluminum friendly.

Quit passing around **** that might have been true in the 60's.

 

I thought HotTank was part of a rebuild process, it should be ok right?

 

Tell you machine shop that you will be sending them an aluminum block or head and they will be able to tell you if their equipment/solvent is compatible.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Nextelbuddy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
please do not have your friend hot tank the block or head...

they are made of aluminum and hot tanking the block and head will ruin them</TD></TR></TABLE>


you have too many posts to be this dumb

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Nextelbuddy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
please do not have your friend hot tank the block or head...

they are made of aluminum and hot tanking the block and head will ruin them</TD></TR></TABLE>
no that is not true

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by FormulaGSR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">


you have too many posts to be this dumb</TD></TR></TABLE>

hmm from what ive read from many people they have had bad experiences with hot tanking aluminum.. infact hers one thing i have read:

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by honda-tech member &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">


FYI if you hot tank aluminum, you will not get it back. it will disappear. the soda ash reacts reacts with the aluminum and eats it up. you can cold tank it in carb cleaner then wash the hell out of it.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

I had my engine tanked while it was at the machine shop. They used aluminum friendly solvent in a 180°F bath.

You all need to ask your machine shops how they handle cleaning aluminum parts. If you don't and they **** it up, who's fault is it really?

Blanket statements like, "Don't hot-tank aluminum" is plain horseshit.

 

so we would have no other choice but to just "hot tank" it?

 

its not just the valve cover gasket is it?

 

if you have money to spend, buy some kerosene and soak it

no one has made a comment yet on kerosene, this is just something my machine told me to do.

 

that's just normal oil build up from over the yrs. The previous owner use conventional oil instead of synthetic. It is also a good indication that the motor is relatively old.
If the engine is fine, no problems, just put the valve cover back on.. and don't clean n e thing off. Then use mobil 1 full synthetic instead of conventional oil, and over time, it will clean all that gunk off by it self just by using it. The risk in that is in an old motor, some of the seals might have gone bad and relies on that gunk to seal it. Using synthetic might make yr motor leak oil slighlty... just replace whatever seal goes bad.
No real point in just cleaning the valve cover off... its every where in the motor, not just the valve cover.
I just recently did a timing belt change on a friends car and switched to synthetic. When i take off her valve cover, it is clean now, after using synthetic for a while.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mingbling96 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">that's just normal oil build up from over the yrs. The previous owner use conventional oil instead of synthetic.</TD></TR></TABLE>



I just want to add that it doesn't have to be synthetic motor oil. Any premium grade motor oil will have more detergents that will help remove the "gunk".

To learn more about this, go to http://www.bobistheoilguy.com. They have an excellent forum.

 

"Hot tanking a head can only mess up the valve seals if the head is left in there for so long since the hot water just stays there. But if the head is bare, you can leave it in the hot tank for as long as you want." Machine Shop

 

the original person that started this thread said that he got the motor from a junkyard with the assumption that the motor is good. If it is a good motor, why would he take it apart.. just to clean it?

 

i dont know but i think i am going to call my headwork guy and found out. He's been working on Honda's all his life and he even said, "....hot tank the head" in the estimate...So i think in some cases its ok, but there are variants that determine that, such as what is left in the head, and temperature, solvent strength... etc