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I love the way a leaking head gasket will totally clean a head and piston. How to do this in a controlled manner for all cylinders?
Well you can but it's not for the timid or inexperienced. I haven't done it in years but was trained by a master mechanic in the early 80's. I wouldn't do it without a master tech at my side. It requires a bit of touch and hearing. My hearing's been shot for too long to spoon feed water down the throttle body (carbs on most vehicles then). Besides, the detergents today are superior than they were then.
FYI, unrelated and just for grins - back in the day we used Kerosene when we changed the oil on the high miles vehicles. It bought time and did the job.
Piston rings were a PIA and easy enough to free up on an old SBC or Hemi. The alternative was of course to pull the pistons, hone the cylinders and re-ring, but when you're young and have no money....
Drain the oil, fill with Kerosene (5 quarts) fire it up and let it idle. Car would smoke like a son of bee but it would clean the valves, stems and rings quickly. 30 minutes later, drain again, replace the filter and fill that bad boy up with 5 quarts of "Holiday" brand "Duralube". Now I'm talking pre cat cars and leaded gas was still readily available so, mid 1970's. Never stopped em from smoking completely but helped a lot and back then the goal was to keep em on the road to 100k miles.
Maybe my brain is foggy, but I can't think of a "solenoid air cleaner." I wonder if he meant the control flap solenoid on the air cleaner housing? On the supercharged cars, there is a small flap on the side of the air cleaner housing. At higher engine speeds and loads the flap is opened to provide additional air as required. The flap is opened via a solenoid that is controlled by the ECM. In the diagram below, the flap is Part 2 and the solenoid is Part 3:
The only thing that wouldn't make sense to me is that several owners have removed the flap entirely to provide more air at all times, so I don't think a leak at the solenoid would trigger lean DTCs.
One thing worth checking would be the air pipe with all the Helmholtz resonators, or "branches." It's unnumbered but visible in the above diagram. On the underside is a cylindrical resonator. Check for cracks around that cylinder where it mounts to the main pipe, as well as in other places on that pipe and around the other resonators.
Cheers,
Don
Turns out that it was in fact number 5. Air outlet to throttle body. They told me it's actually an easy fix and something I could probably do on my own which was refreshing to hear.
12-23-2016, 01:12 PM
