Was wondering what Over The Counter solvents yall could recommend so i can get the baked in oil grime out of my trucks intake manifold..

Im needing something that could melt the crud away without harming the aluminum... The CRC parts washing solvent i got worked great on the outside with a brass scrub brush.. but inside the manifold it seemed like the stuff was just laughing at me. Which unfortunately made even harder since i cant get anything in there to really scrub it. worried about putting it back on now after having it immersed once in solvent and getting solid hard chunks coming off the inside.. afraid more might come loose and get stuck in the cylinders..

use to have some nice stuff that just melted the grime away when i did a previous engine that was encased in a 1/2" thick layer of road grit, oil grime.. but havent been able to find it.. nor can i remember what it was called.

 

I usually use mineral spirits. Works well and is fairly cheap. May need to soak a while though.

 

A liberal soaking of PB Blaster, followed by pressurized hot water.

Kerosene and gasoline are also excellent solvents.

 

There shouldn't be much inside an intake manifold, since gas goes through and cleans most of it. Only ones I have seen get bad were Mercedes diesels with EGR. Mine was plugged up to just about pencil sized.

 

the only time you have gas inside the whole intake is with carbureted or throttle body injected motor as the fuels introduced at the start of the intake.. MPFI its introduced right behind the intake valves... Most the newer diesels its injected directly into the cylinders.

Diesels are known for and bad at coating their intakes with oil and grime... Which mines a diesel... PO let the turbo leak oil for who knows how long.. and in addition to that with the turbos ability to suck the oil vapors from the crank case it has a bad habit of coating all the intake & tubing with oil.. mine was bad for both of that when i got it.. installed a CCV filter and rebuilt the turbo to stop both... What also didnt help is the EGR cooler & Valve design which lets the soot particles bind with the oil slick inside the intake to build up on the interior walls slowly restricting your air flow..

Now if you happen to get a bad EGR cooler and the coolant happens to get vaporized it does have a nice ability to steam clean the intake which is kind of funny there as it usually makes it a mess lol Mine never got that far though..


But anyways.. I ended up giving the intake to my neighbor earlier this week to take to his shop. After the stuff i had worked great on the outside but failed on inside (since i couldnt scrub there) i asked him about cleaning it.. Said hed do it for me no problems.. Took it to his shop and let it soak in his hot tank for a hour or so.. came out nice and clean...

 

All diesels only inject into the cylinders, the fuel is injected right about TDC, and is immediately combusted. If the fuel was in the airflow then the process wouldn't work.
I didn't realize you were working on a diesel.

 

I usually use parts washing solvent cut 50/50 with diesel fuel

 

yup working on a diesel atm.. first diesel ive ever had.. so working on it is trial by fire so to speak....


hmmm thought there was a tractor diesel engine where the fuel was brought in with the air flow at the bottom of the stroke through the sides of the cylinder walls instead of using the common overhead valves we see today.. maybe it was a gasser.. but could have sword it was diesel i was reading about...

 

You are thinking of the two stroke Detroit. Those intake through ports in the cylinder walls but fuel is still injected in the cylinder. It is not mixed prior to injection in the cylinder.

 

There is no ignition device in a diesel. The compression pressures are much higher in a diesel, heating the air over 1000*f, and then fuel is injected straight into the cylinder. The high heat ignites the fuel immediately as it's injected. In a gasser, the fuel and air are mixed prior to compression, which is much lower. Once compressed, the spark plug fires, igniting the mix.

 

that much i did know and was why they had glow plugs to warm the cylinders for combustion... It was just heat and compression that caused diesel to combust...

oddly enough you can do the same with Gasoline as well without a spark... just less efficient with them.. it gets a little more unpredictable when it would go off... but has been done...

 

I just cleaned out the intake manifold of an off-topic car, it was aluminum and EFI.
I used oven cleaner and hot water. It worked really well, but oven cleaner is not recommended for aluminum and will often turn it grey.
Also, it is very corrosive so I used long rubber gloves and eye protection, and did this outdoors.


I attached my garden hose to a hot water supply so I could pre-warm the intake and rinse it with hot water.


The intake had a lot of sticky hard deposits in it which were not touched at all by regular petroleum solvents, but the oven cleaner did the trick.

 

I feel like a Berrymans rep today, but I use Berrymans B12 for anything i can't get clean in the solvent tank. Just don't forget the PPE....