I loosened the head bolts and noticed my car started leaking something. OMFG! I realized I had forgotten to drain the coolant, so I did that, then I took off the head with the exhaust manifold still on there (it wouldn't come off), hefty little sucker. After that, I wiped some coolant that had dripped into the pistons and noticed they had a lot of crud, or carbon deposits or something. Here's the pics, tell me if this looks normal:






^^There's the valves... more crud.


^^stock headgasket I assume, notice the date (03 96)...





Is all that crap on the pistons normal? Sorry I'm a total newbie when it comes to this. How do I go about cleaning this? Do I need any special solvent or something that you recommend? Thanks.

Thats pretty much what mine looked like when I took my engine apart. Anyone else?

Yep that is totally normal, and also proof that our cars run rich from the factory :thumbsup. I have heard that you can take some acitone to those carbon deposits and clean it right up, but I haven't ever done it. If you try that, make sure not to spill it on anything. The carbon really doesnt hurt anything though. If anything, the buildup on the pistons will increase your compression slightly :7

Cool, it's good to know it's not abnormal. What about the coolant though? There was a puddle of coolant chillin in cylinders 2 and 3; I took some towels to absorb it out. Will that have caused any damage? x(

Also anyone else recommend anything to clean it off? Maybe they sell a bottle of "Piston Cleaner" at Autozone or something? Hehe.

mopar combustion chamber cleaner or possibly 44k.

Sup manny,
I guess me and you aer doing the same thing and starting at the same pace. If you see my other post "new updates on rebuild", I just took off my head also. and trust me, I got TONS of carbo build up. Take look at my pictures..it's bad.

BTW, I am kidna curious. you see those hollow holes around the piston (cylinder wall) they are for coolant to go through and cool the engine right, but yours seems kinda blocked from the picture of the engine block you posted. LOOK at mine ok. the link is:
http://www.rpi.edu/~leeg2/eclipse/Engine%20Rebuild/Day%20One/ or
http://www.rpi.edu/~leeg2/eclipse/Engine%20Rebuild/Day%20Two/

Take a look at mine engine block, those holes are HUGE and wide open. Just curious, is that normal?

BTW< you got your bracket out?
As I said, I still have my timing cover on... I just can't take that shit out..... sigh...

Gil.

>BTW, I am kidna curious. you see those hollow holes around
>the piston (cylinder wall) they are for coolant to go through
>and cool the engine right, but yours seems kinda blocked from
>the picture of the engine block you posted.

Wow you took a shitload of pics. :D Yeah, I dunno why the passages on mine are blocked like that. That stuff was actually on the headgasket, however you can also see the passages blocked in the valves pic... I'm just gonna clean it all off.

That's nice.... can you tell me what you used to clean them...coz I have to do taht here also.. LOL..
It's kinda cool that someone is doing the samething with me at the same time.

Are you pulling out yourblock also?
or that's it?

GIl

I'm gonna go look for combustion chamber cleaner later on.

I'm pretty much done with the tear down. My car has 103,000 miles and was leaking a crapload of oil (a quart every 3 weeks). Since I'm out of school and no job, I decided this was a good time to change the headgasket and timing belt along with all the other little stuff.

I notice you have a red and a silver 2gnt? Double the maintenance? :P

Well, the silver is the one I am working on.
For the red, it's like a baby, you can tell from the pictures.. ILOVE IT and she loves me.. . she is as pretty as Jennifer Lopez..LOL.

Anyway, for the silver eclipse, I just got it, and I blew the engine, that's why I need to rebuild it.... sad..
Gil.

wow, after looking at those pictures my coolant hard lines don't seem so bad anymore, yours are all rust where mine is just starting (still replacing though)

Looks like you had a blown head gasket. It was forcing carbon into the coolant jackets. What did you coolant look like? Bett it was brown.

I think you're right. My car overheated twice in the past year and a half or so and I noticed that changing my coolant seemed to fix it temporarily. No wonder.

Seven years and 103,000 miles on the stock headgasket and stock timing belt. I can't believe how well the car held up. :)

How long did it take for you to do this?(pulling the head off)

About three days, and that was doing it the first time and not knowing exactly what I was doing. I also unbolted a lot of stuff I didn't need to, which is alright cause I wanted to clean everything off anyway. If I had to do it again I'd say I could probably do it in under a day (~6 hours) or so.

I still have to put it back together though. I'm waiting for the parts to arrive, and in the meantime I'm cleaning around all the crud. I've decided against putting the timing belt cover back on, and I painted the cam gears silver... it's gonna look nice. :thumbsup