valve job question

[Howard Wilkinson]

    An old trick which I will relate, but not advocate, is to run the
piston down to the bottom of the cylinder, and smear grease on the
cylinder wall above it.  You then run the piston up and the top ring
gathers the grease ahead of it on the way up.  You then perform you
piston cleaning chore with your wire brush while protecting the other
cylinders, etc, and blow or suck the surface clean when done.  Then
you crank the piston back down, and the grease with any crud that
found it's way down around the piston remains near the top of the hole
where you can wipe it out.
    This is a trick many of the old timers used, and it works, but I'm
sure it is not considered good form these days.             H.W.

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Harding <mharding at qonline.com.au>
To: diy_efi at efi332.eng.ohio-state.edu
<diy_efi at efi332.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Sunday, May 02, 1999 9:54 PM
Subject: Re: valve job question


>>off the carbon that was on top of the cylinders. I used to rotate
the engine
>>around and bring the pistons up to tdc and whirl away with a drill
bit
>>mounted wire brush.
>>
>>
>>nowadays I wonder if all it did was make the piston top pretty and
introduce
>>lots of debris into the engine especially the cylinder walls,
creating years
>>of wear in minutes.
>
>Like you i've been known to do the same thing with the drill bit
mounted
>wire brush whilst the head is off (on my own motors), just filling in
time
>i guess and more than anything making it look shmick for any one who
comes
>by :P
>
>when I do I simply make sure that I have someone else holding the
>compressed air across the top of the piston at the same time, and
rags down
>the adjacent cylinders.  generally most of the debris gets blown
away, and
>any that is down the gap can be blown out with the compressed air.
>
>When you rotate that piston to the bottom again, just carefully wipe
up the
>bore with a clean rag, that will get any lingering debris.
>
>If you are really concerned, just turn the engine over by hand a
couple
>more times, and look for any more being dropped by the piston as it
goes
>down the bore.
>
>just my thoughts :)
>
>One thing i do think it can help with is a high compression engine
pinging,
>because (for a short time) there is no carbon deposits to stay hot
enough
>to ignite the fuel/air.
>
>again just my thoughts, and some observation...
>
>cya
>
>