need RELEVANT/non snarky advice.....carbon removal

[ryan roopnarine]

i went ahead and tried the saturn piston soak before my oil change over to german castrol 0w30 aka castrol SLX aka jesus' motor oil...to see if i could get any more carbon than the water induction did. this consists of pouring 1-2 oz of the top end cleaner of your choice into each spark plug hole, letting it soak for between 30 mins to overnight, cranking it out with the starter/blowing it out with air, and reassembling and driving at high rpm. unfortunately, when i looked into the cylinders, i saw that with the exception of 1 and 6, each looked like someone dropped a fingerful of potting soil in there (carbon) on the tops of the pistons. when i cranked it out, the rag i was using to prevent a "large" mess was covered in bits in the areas in which holes were covered. i would have thought that the water that i ran through would have at least put a dent in this mess. this would explain a lot of my ping in this 10-1 compression motor. afterward, the throttle was crisper, and the ping band had moved up to above 2500, but it was still there (and still there when i manually kick it down to 6500 rpm). i thought that this would be less harsh on the motor than the water induction...but with the amount that i had to crank the motor over before it would restart after this little exercise....well, i'm sure they were all a little starved for oil (would have helped to use an aircompressor, perhaps that makes the difference).

anyway

anyone suggest a way (other than taking the head off, that's out of the question). that i could get this carbon? i'm thinking that i could use berryman's aerosol cleaner and a gun brush in there before my next oil change, but i'm sure that will be more complicated than i anticipate. i ran at least 50-75 gals of fuel with a double dose of strong fuel injector cleaner through before i did the water induction. any old timer tricks, advice---that anyone can offer? thanks.

[Anton CH.]

Wasn't your head already removed a while back? If it got carboned up that quickly something isn't right and I doubt anything you do will clean it up in a long term. I am suprised that you are not a bit worried about that carbon dripping down and ruining your bearings.

[ryan roopnarine]

Wasn't your head already removed a while back? If it got carboned up that quickly something isn't right and I doubt anything you do will clean it up in a long term. I am suprised that you are not a bit worried about that carbon dripping down and ruining your bearings.

this motor never had its head off....my other one did. i was concerned about crap migrating downward, that's why i didn't do this until i was ready to change the oil immediately afterwards. the intake valves, when the motor was out, were pretty clean, admittedly. this was about 27k miles ago (about 1 year).

[winfred]

mabey it's the design of the m50 intake that's not conductive to a wet flow, on m20 m30 bmws and b230 volvos it works for me, i just did a 93 940 turbo two days ago that was pinging it's ass off (combo of old woman driver and cheepo gas) 3 water treatments and some flogging got it almost smoking the tires off the line (the computer wasn't backing down the timing and killing power anymore)

[Jeff N.]

Have you considered the infamous italian tune up? Also, do you buy the same brand of gas every week? If so, you might try switching to another brand.

Jeff