took off the head today... hmmm

[fiznat]

I pulled the head off of my project KA today, and I'm a little bit worried about what was underneath. The pistons look kinda questionable... I'm not sure if this is just carbon built up, or evidence of major (ish?) damage. I was hopin you guys could look at this and let me know what you think:

[WDRacing]

I've had many junkyard engines look like that on top of the pistons, its just alot of carbon build up. Make sure you look at the valves to, they are probably just as bad off, which hinder flow and sealing.

If the piston walls aren't scratched I'd run a ball hone through them. you didn't by chance run a compression check on the motor prior to the head coming off did ya?

WD

[Nathan]

Ahhh, the beautiful sight of a dirty motor thats probably NEVER been apart before Looks pretty normal on each of the pistons, the only thing that looked a little odd was the discoloration of that cylinder wall in the last pic. Was that a product of the camera or anything? Also, like WD said...how those valves lookin?

[WDRacing]

The piston walls do look a tad discolored.

[MikeMurphy]

damn thats nasty

[TurboKA37]

damn, ive never opened an engine up either and that would surprize me as well. i guess u get used to seeing all those oil commercials that show the internals of the engine sparkly clean! anyway, how many miles do you have on that engine?

[fiznat]

the valves:



They look pretty normal I guess... then again this is the first CAR engine I've opened up before. Thats not a crack right there in the first set.. just some weird shadow or something

The cyl walls look a little more discolored in that pic than they do in real life... they seemed fine to me- I think that coloration is just oil and crap that got magnified by the light.

The engine is a 85,000 mile 97 KA

[sil80drifter]

my spare head looked just liked that before i took it aparta nd simple greened the poo out of it. i wodner if i should have let the cam and rocker arm rods soak in oil....

sil80

[Checkered-Member]

what can be used to clean all that?

[fiznat]

well those pistons are gonna be thrown out, and the whole block hot-tanked so eh.

[bruinbear714]

That looks normal... it just looks like the engine has been sitting out in the open for a while.

[Drift Machine]

Hehe, it looks just like my old engine did when I took off the head.

http://www.geocities.com/mokoginjob/what.html

[Altiman94]

needs a good cleaning and itll be good.

[erich]

Are those the correct spark plugs? They look a little short to me.

[Nathan]

damn, they DO look short...are they almost totally unscrewed fizzy?

[fiznat]

lol no they're minature spark plugs! I got em special just to see if you guys would notice!

haha nah theyre just mostly unscrewed, I just had em in there and forgot about them....

[andrave]

thats what mine looks like, my head is in better shape than that though.and my engine sat for a year before I got around to picking it up and taking it apart, so mine has some crap on teh pistons too. I'm probably just leaving them in the bores since the cylinders are still in good shape, so what should I use to clean the carbon and crap off the pistons?