Valve Cleaning moderate success
 

Myself, @Domino81, @MazdaBoy2.3 got together yesterday to clean my dirty ass valves in prep for a BT install next month. Here's the obligatory valve pic:

Attachment 98649

Shitty pic I know, but we were more concerned with the fact it took about 5 hours to get the intake manifold off (thanks @kritz). The method we used was simply soaking in B12, scraping, and vacuuming. It's definitely not as effective as media blasting, but it works well enough. If you are going to do this i reccomend soaking in B12, using a dental pick to scrape the valves while the B12 is in there, and then draining. Repeat this 3-4 times per valve and they will be looking a lot better.

Only problem we ran into was when soaking one of the valves, it must have not been completely seated due to carbon buildup, and after leaving for about and hour we came back and the B12 had drained into the cylinder. To get it out we pulled the spark plug and used a shop vac suck it directly from the cylinder (Maybe Anthony can post a pic of the ghetto rigged vacuum).

So the valves are all clean, and we start putting her back together. Not too bad, MINUS GETTING THE FUCKING BELT BACK ON. To finally get it back on we put an open ended wrench on the tensioner, attached a second open ended wrench to that so we could get the mechanical advantage, and managed to hulk it back on.

The car starts initially in a cloud of white smoke (thanks B12) but is running with no problems after a minute. We take it for a test drive and all is good, minus an inexplicable rattle. We pulled over and looked for the source but no luck. Anyway, I drive the car from Syracuse to Watertown (about 55mi) with the slight rattle the whole way. I park the car and go right to bed because it was like 4am. This morning I go to start her up and make sure everything is good. The car starts no problems, except the rattle is still there.

Long story short, Anthony I found the open ended wrench we used on the tensioner.

Attachment 98652

LOL

Attachment 98652

I almost forgot about the rice sighting
Attachment 98660

Oooooooohhhhh... Yeah, I need that back. lol Car running any better? I woke up after going to bed around 3 at 10... then took a nap, actually just woke up. Probably about 2 hours. Surprised I didn't wake up crippled.

Mileage?

Haha yep I have it set aside. Car's running fine now, still no code from the EGR delete though. I felt ok when I woke up, my hands are just all torn to shit.

@duappleganger; - nice meeting ya, and glad you guys were able to get it all back together!
@Domino81; - I left my 3" extension (3/8 drive) and my 1" for the 1/4 drive at your house...

Here's a pic I took of the intake mani off.

Just under 47,000. I wish I had taken better pics but it seemed that, from right to left, the valves were progressively nastier.

I have some blurry photos on my phone.

Tried to get a pic of the valves myself. Didn't come out very well.

Oy Vey! Learning is so fun! trolololol