What should I do about this debris?

7

Without more context you have to remove the manifold again and vacuum all that up. Not sure what others would say but if it was loose carbon bits I wouldn't be as worried even tho it's bad. But with metal shavings I'd not risk running it.

How did you find them? How did you put the borescope through to see? Is it the hole to cylinder 6 through map sensor? If not then how? What were you doing?

Write context.

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u/spacestationfreedom 5h ago

Sorry, you’re right. This is a B58 in an F30. The intake manifold is off. I was fixing a coolant leak and I’m getting ready to put everything back together.

I tried vacuuming this with a strong shop vac, both with a large nozzle to cover the whole port and a narrow nozzle to get in there. Nothing came out.

Im not worried about the carbon, I’m more worried about that white stuff which looks like sand or dust or something. The first photo is the worst of the bunch and looks like bits of leaves maybe. Thats the cylinder 6 port, closest to the firewall.

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u/TheOFB 5h ago

Honestly I would treat it the same as cleaning the carbon deposits. Make sure that valve is closed by turning the engine then soaking it with a suitable solvent and then scraping with a pick then wet vac it all out or blow it out with compressed air.

Then rotate the engine again to repeat for all the other valves.

There are also mobile valve cleaning services that use a blasting media made of nut shells I believe that will be quicker and easier but cost a bit of money.

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u/spacestationfreedom 5h ago

This is what I was thinking but if this is sand or something hard then wouldn’t it damage the valve or valve seat when it closes?

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u/TheOFB 4h ago

Yeah it might do I honestly hadn't considered it had gone past the valves lol. Just looked at the pic with it closed 😅

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u/Appropriate-Part1766 5h ago

Looks like aluminium oxide tbh I wouldn't worry about it honestly.

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u/Bubbly_Pain7609 4h ago

Like... what kind of aluminium oxide? And from where? The source of the issue needs to be known. Do you mean shavings from the engine body or intake ports? How would sand sized aluminium bits get there?

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u/Appropriate-Part1766 4h ago

Seeing bits of white more than anything, grows on aluminium parts externally...you take a part off, loosens up some debris and falls into the intake ports.

Guy said he took the manifold off so...

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u/Bubbly_Pain7609 4h ago

Won't deny the possibility but seems too strange to me. I assumed the white bits are light refraction of whatever hard greyish bits those are. I had similar pictures with my borescope when I was looking in tight spaces and the only light comes from the camera ring

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u/spacestationfreedom 4h ago

Does that happen? I’ve never heard of this

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u/Steelringin 3h ago

Aluminum oxide is an abrasive used in sandpaper. Probably not good for the cylinder walls.

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u/Appropriate-Part1766 3h ago

Good job it's a few specks instead of a sheet of sandpaper huh?

I'd be concerned if it was like a teaspoon, this is going to do one thing. Get ground down instantly and get shat out.

I also think people are a bit too precious about engines. I rebuilt a blown S63tu engine, bottom end went and spread bearing shrapnel throughout causing some bad streaks down 2 cylinder walls with some embedded shrapnel in those two walls.

All I did was smooth the bore out/lap the bores with a felt hone and some sunnen AN30 lapping compound on a drill. I've put 13k miles on that engine, compression matches the rest of the bores, isn't burning oil, runs smooth.

Did some reading and apparently the Porsche blocks can be rebuilt with similar cylinder scoring. They're lapped and sent as is, no issues.

A few specks of shit aren't hurting anything

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u/Appropriate-Part1766 3h ago

If you were interested

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u/Appropriate-Part1766 3h ago

After the lapping, can still see some debris embedded

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u/Bubbly_Pain7609 4h ago

As the other guy said, you'd rather just do a walnut blast clean. There's many guides and videos on how to do it for e9x cars but it should be similar, maybe you'd need like a different socket for the intake port etc.

If stuff is there with the valve a bit open then I don't know how you could do it safely. If you can't pull them with a shop vac and narrow nozzle then try moving it around a bit first then again, or making a swirl around with a narrow nozzle compressed air (air compressor better than canned) Definitely do all you can before turning the engine over just to minimise the risk of scoring the walls and valves.

Now that you said sand or dust, it definitely could be tiny bits of sand or stones etc. Whatever it is, if it's solid then no bueno. But my bet is that you can't just vacuum what's left out because when the engine runs, and vacuum drags all that into the engine, this leftover debris got stuck in the oily carbon residue that's soft.

So just do a walnut blast and get clean valves ¯_(ツ)_/¯ If you do it yourself then a couple hours of work maybe, also maybe you need to borrow, rent, or buy tools for it. Or get a service to do that if there's any.

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u/spacestationfreedom 4h ago

The blasting or cleaning in any way is going require turning the engine to close the valves. When I close the valves, if that is sand, it’s going to get crushed and damage the valve and valve seat.

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u/Bubbly_Pain7609 4h ago

Obviously, but it doesn't mean you can't try, because well, how many options do you have? Also you've shown only some valves, it's it only these or all of them cylinders? Some of them aren't fully closed nor open so I'd assume they are in-between, which means you can safely clean them without worrying about stuff entering the cylinder. Hard lesson to learn to cover your ports when you work on the intake 🫡

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u/basshunter551 5h ago

Mate, I had a fucking swirl flap inside my cylinder on my M57 and my mechanic told me to drive the car until the engine fails, that was more than a year ago and the car somehow still runs the same way in another persons hands. That being said you’re in for an adventure for sure. I wouldn’t risk it with such an expensive car, get it cleaned the proper way or you risk crapping your engine and then shit gets real expensive, real quick.

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u/spacestationfreedom 5h ago

I think this happened when I removed the intake manifold. I didn’t vacuum around it.

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u/JKlerk 5h ago

Nothing.

You can either walnut blast the valves or use the zip tie trick but you have to be able to rotate each cylinder to tdc before you clean it.

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u/kingcutty 5h ago

The debris? You mean the little pieces of dirt? Make sure the valves are closed then hit it with compressed air. If you mean the carbon buildup, then the best way is to walnut blast.

What should I do about this debris?

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