How to clean lifter valley

[bredstein]

Hello! My '98 Tahoe with a 5.7 engine had a P0305 code with a SES light. After eliminating any possible ignition problems, I realized that it was a bad injector. The plan was to get rid of the old poppets and install a new MFI setup. At the same time I was loosing a good amount of coolant from a leaking manifold gasket, so I decided to do two things at once. My question to those who have done this job is about the valley: what is the best way to clean it? Where do the holes at the bottom lead? That said, if I wash everything around with a paint thinner or a brake cleaner, will it drain through the oil plug? Here are a few pictures. This black nasty stuff is quite impressive!

[SunlitComet]

Holly carbon shit! I would plug the holes to the crankcase and use towels, scrapers, chemicals and a wet/dry vacuum. Don't let it drain anywhere.

:welcome:

---------- Post added at 01:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:00 AM ----------

I am sure the green coolant is not helping either.

[AtomicHoe094]

Yea looks like your on the right track. holes at the bottom lead to the cam correct???

[bredstein]

Holly carbon shit! I would plug the holes to the crankcase and use towels, scrapers, chemicals and a wet/dry vacuum. Don't let it drain anywhere.

I read or heard somewhere about cleaning and then flushing it all down these holes with an old oil followed by a quart of a good oil. After all, the holes are normally open, so this carbon shouldn't have any problems going down before I took the manifold off, then how is draining different?

[retorq]

All those holes end up in the crankcase, I would get the gunk out of there instead of letting it fall into the pan, you don't want to miss any and have it clog up your oil pump.

[SunlitComet]

that is where I was going. remove the pan if you clean it that way.