Well, carbon cleaning is done.
Getting the manifold off was pretty simple. Followed Charle's video. Didn't have to touch the fuel line. Hardest part was maybe getting that triple square loose at the bottom of the manifold support bracket? Didn't fully remove it, but loosened it a bit to have some wiggle room with the bracket. Idk, there was nothing really challenging.
Valves themselves were... not that bad, actually. Not sure if the chemical cleaning done a while ago actually did something, or if it had been cleaned before, but th valves were better than I was expecting.
What wasn't, was the chamber, and the manifold runner plates. Oh God were those disgusting.
I found out why people don't take more pictures though. Getting good pictures is hard, and then half the time you have gloves on and working with some nasty shit.
But here is an example before cleaning.
View attachment 262079
Can see some cruddy build up, but the actual valve isn't too bad. Here's an after.
View attachment 262080
You can see they are looking much better still.
Here's the shit scrapped off the runner plates.
View attachment 262081
They were fucking disgusting.
Cleaned everything, cleaned everything again, then cleaned everything a 3rd time, and then buttoned everything back up. All seems well. Low speed, like under 25mph 1st and 2nd with very light throttle
might be smoother? Not sure. Went for a short drive, did a sweet AWD launch, and all is behaving as expected. Overall, I'd call it a success.
Only "tip" I'd say, since FCP's and Charle's videos cover everything and it's all pretty straightforward, is try to have some kind of small, like very small, tube adapter thing for your vacuum. So you can stick it in the chamber and suck shit out. We used a piece of 3/8" tubing, and just kind of tried to seal it with our hands at the vacuum attachment. But having something you can use to stick in the chamber that's attached to your vacuum is super helpful.