No problem @Jtsanders; always here to help.
I know how to remove that pesky carbon from heads too.
When I was about 12 my dad was going to replace the head gasket on my home made mini bike.
He was going to bring the gasket home some night after work. I decided that I’d help out and clean up all the parts real good while he was at work.
I couldn’t get that carbon off the inside of the head worth a crap. So I went through dads cans and bottles of stuff on the shelf. I noticed this big glass bottle in the back and I noticed that it’s cap was just crumbling to pieces.
Muriatic acid the label said…I though…acid…that’ll clean it.
I found a old cook pot that the head fit in and filled the pot with acid.
Boy, you could see that this stuff was working…fumes, smoke, boiling away.
Well dad didn’t bring home the gasket and I forgot about it in the shed until he and I went out there the next night. There was a head, but the gasket surface was pitted 1/4 inch deep.
I did find the handle of the pot!!!
This is where I got my first lesson on rebuilding a corner wall of a shed.
Oven cleaner will remove the paint and severely damage aluminum…With today’s electronically controlled cars, washing the engine is like removing the back from your TV set and hosing it out…
I can tell you this…On Fords Modular V8 engines, replacing the water-damaged parts can be very expensive…
@Caddyman: “With today’s electronically controlled cars, washing the engine is like removing the back from your TV set and hosing it out.”
If that were an apt comparison, we couldn’t drive our cars in the rain. Indoor home electronics are much more susceptible to damage from moisture than a car’s engine bay. The electronics on a car’s engine are protected from moisture, so as long as you are careful and don’t go crazy, you shouldn’t do any harm.
Having said that, I have almost never seen the point in cleaning an engine unless I was looking for a leak of some kind.
Pressure washers can force water into sensitive components, like COPS…If water penetrates into the spark plug wells, trouble is guaranteed…The seals protect fine against rain-water blowing in but pressure washers are another story…
I agree, and using a pressure washer on your engine bay falls under what I call “going crazy” and not being careful. In fact, I’m firmly against using a pressure washer on ANY part of a car.
Having said that, I have used engine cleaner and a garden hose with no ill effects, but that was long ago and I was careful.