Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Cleaning Heads...

Hi everyone. Ive got a Cougar with a V6 Duratec. I wanted to post this on the Cougar forum...but it seems like its being revamped...so I decided to post here on my car's sister/cousin forum (whatever you wanna call it :P)

I am in the process of removing my UIM/LIM to clean. When I took the LIM off...I noticed that there is a lot of sludge in the heads all the way down to what looks like the pistons. Does anyone know what is the best way to clean that? I thought about shoving a piece of a shop towel all the way down and then spraying the inside of the head with cleaner and then taking out the towel with long tweezers or something (and repeating that process on each head since there would be a large build up of cleaner in there). Also...will any of the carbon sludge (that is all the way in the bottom) burn off once the engine is started up again?

I really would like to clean it because after cleaning the UIM/LIM, it would seem that cleaning the heads as well would make sense...since now the "bottleneck" is now the carbon-cruded heads. I would really appreciate any advice.

-alan

Welcome to CEG!


Do not insert any metal objects down into the ports.
The last thing you want to do is scratch a valve stem.

Put a piece of rag into the top of the ports and saturate with cleaner. Let it sit, re-wet periodically. Don't use a ton as it will just go into your oil. After a while most of it will wipe out. Blow air through the plug hole to get any liquid out. Once you reassemble it and get it running, crack the secondaries a bit and use some seafoam or the like to clean the valves, cylinders, and other remaining residue. The secondaries must be cracked open for the cleaner to reach the short runner intake ports.

Then, change the oil!

Welcome.

Thanks Roger...I appreciate the help. I've been losing lots of power with my car. She's a 99 with only 65K miles on her. Ive already changed out all four of the O2 sensors, plugs and wires, and now Im cleaning the UIM/LIM. A couple plugs looked worn out...I got a CEL for an O2 sensor...so I went ahead and swaped them all out since the others will be failing very soon...and they were a pain in the butt to swap out. I havent put her together yet with all the new changes...so Im hoping that this will help and also improve my fuel economy (I'm getting 18-18.5 average...both highway and city)

I cant wait to get her back together again...wash and wax her and make her look nice and pretty again

thanks again
-alan

Any mods?

Nope...no mods. I only painted my calipers red (if thats even considered a mod...lol) I thought about doing an svt swap when I took my uim/lim off...but when I saw the price of all the parts, I decided against it. I plan on getting a new car within the next 4 years...so I didnt wanna shell out the money. I can use it towards a down-payment or something. I do plan on keeping my cougar as a secondary car until she completely dies

-alan