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How to Clean and Refinish Valves

We going to show you how  to restore a valve that you have for  your engine and make it look brand new again, so I'm in the middle of working on  my cylinder head and I'm almost done the  porting and polishing procedure now I do  have a video coming out for that and  it's taken quite a long time because  it's a lot of work and a lot of  man-hours that are being put into that  but I wanted to give you guys a video in the meantime and let you guys know what  I'm up to.


So in today's video I'm gonna  show you how to go from a valve that  looks like this that's disgusting  corroded and covered in old oil and  carbon and I'm gonna show you how to  make it look like this where it  basically looks brand-new  so the process is quite simple you don't  need a lot of tools for it and the  results speak for themselves.

Now in this  video I mean working on the valves from  my Mini Cooper motor but you can apply  this exact same thing to any kind of  valves that you're working with so it  doesn't matter if you're working on  intake valves or exhaust valves this  concept is the exact same thing so I'm  gonna first show you the difference  between the two and I'm going to show  you how to get that done so.

These here  are two intake valves so this guy right  here is the one that's covered in carbon  and it looks disgusting so this does  have a lot of kilometers on it it has   to be more specific and this one  here is the exact same valve as this guy  but cleaned up and polished and you can  see it looks great so it doesn't matter  which way you look at it it looks better  from every direction so this valve right  here is what's happened after a direct  injection engine has gotten to it and  it's done it's damage for  kilometers.

Now beforehand I cleaned up  this entire valve and remove the large  pieces of carbon that were found on here  and you can see that there's a good  amount of stuff that's found around the  outside perimeter of the valve and that  right there is what's actually making my  engine have an improper seal there are  gonna be two different ways that you can  make the valves usable again.

There's  gonna be a quick way and then a more  professional way I'm going to show you  how to do both of those should you want  to choose between the two so I have  right here a tray that has all the  components to my cylinder head now if  you look on this line right here this is  all my intake valves and this line of  valves right here is all for my exhaust  you can see that the first four look  great and the back four don't quite look  so good I'm gonna show you how to make  these ones here look like this so to  begin I'll be using my Dewalt drill and  installing each one of these valves into  the Chuck of the drill now the reason.

Why I'm doing this is because I can make  the entire valve spin on an axis and  then all that I'll have to do after that  is grab either the sandpaper or the  scotch-brite and just hold it on the  valve so you can see how easy it is to  actually remove all the dirt to build up  in the imperfections on each one of the  valves now depending on how dirty it is  and how complex it is  you might have to just clean up the vows  first with a little bit of degreaser but  if it's just a light amount of dirt or a  light amount of buildup you can remove  all of it just like this so doing it .

This way will get you by and this is  what most shops will do when you're just  gonna have to get the cylinder head  refinished a little bit they're not  gonna go to a crazy extent to go ahead  and polish the valves all that they're  going to do is this process right here  now this is good this did remove most of  it but we can make this a little bit  better now if you do care about your  engine this is the prime time to get  this done so at this point you can see  that it does look pretty good all the  carbons removed but we can still make  this.

Look a little bit better you can  see by comparing it next to an older  valve you can see how much crap we've  removed from the valve itself so if  there's any more carbon that's on there  all you're gonna have to do is turn your  drill on hold it a little piece of  scotch right there and it will do its  thing you're not gonna want to do the  work itself you're gonna want to let the  drill do its thing so just hold the  piece of scotch brite wherever it needs  to be and all the carbon will come off .

The valve that I have here on the left  is after I've polished it and after I've  made it look good the valve on the right  is only after I've used the scotch brite  now it does look pretty good but we  still can make this look a little bit  better so for the next step I'm gonna be  grabbing a bowl and putting a little bit  of water in it and you'll see why the  reason why I'm going to be doing this is  because for the next parts what we're  gonna be doing is when you wet sanding  the valve I'm first gonna begin with an grit piece of sandpaper and we're  gonna do the same kind of process as we  did with a scotch brite but,

Instead of  the scotch brite it's sandpaper so this is gonna be removing the heavier  imperfections and the scratch marks that  we embedded while we were using this  scotch brite so with the valve inside  the drill just turn it on and let the  sandpaper do its thing if you can keep  the valve along with the sandpaper  completely submerged in the water we're  not going to have any dust that's going  to come off of the valve and we're not  gonna have any dirt or whatever that's  going to be airborne .

When you do it like  this the sandpaper also lasts a little  bit longer so be sure to get the stem be  sure to get the bottom and be sure to  just get  every single part of it so that  everything gets sanded and is nice and  uniform after what sending our valve  with our  good sandpaper we can see  that we've got a nice finish and it  looks like this if it doesn't look like  this you're gonna want to go back and  keep using the grit until looks  .

Really nice and really smooth so at this  point we've got a much better finish  than just the scotch brite but if we  want we can make this look even better  now to do that we're gonna be going to a  higher grit sandpaper and we're gonna  wet sand it again  I'm gonna be using  grit and then  we're gonna keep working our way up  until we get to our polish so just like  before....

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