Don't mind the yellow colored spots on the first pic.. Was trying to illistrate something.. Anyways you can see where the red arrows are pointing, that's where the gasket was failing.. And yes, those valves look like crap.. Don't worry
This stuff is the SHIT!.. Combined with a brass wire wheel brush, tooth-brush for the hard to reach areas and a good ole terry cloth, well, you can see the results below.. It's not 100%, but it's as close to "new" looking as it'll ever be or has been for quite some time..
As you can see, most of the built up carbon is gone except for a little bit on the valves themselves.. I tried to get more of those clean, but that carbon was just stubborn. I finally gave up, being completely satisfied with the cleaning process on the head.
The rest of the pics are at various stages of the cleaning process on the piston heads.. I couldn't remove all the carbon deposits from it, but like the valves, they're ALOT better and as new as they'll ever be or have been. I'm content with the fact that I believe I found my overheating process and cleaned up the internals which should help the performance of the bike..
Now, onto the bad.. When the manual tells you to torque your valve cover bolts to 10Nm, STOP when it makes that first "click".. I made the mistake of falsely over-tightening one of the bolts and it snapped on me last night. It's very deceiving because the valve cover bolts all have rubber seals, plus there's a bushing on the bolt itself.. The threads don't start immediately in the hole and well, when that bushing bottoms out, the torque wrench "clicks" however it doesn't feel tight because of the rubbers.. Now I gotta get that bolt out of there and hope I can find one at the stealership without having to wait 3 weeks for it..
oh well
