Concentrating on the main lump, I removed the 4 nuts securing the cylinder head, carefully undoing them in turn to relieve the pressure evenly, upon inspecting the head I could see it had a layer of carbon build up, but nothing too thick or burnt on. The crown of the piston had a similar covering if not a little thicker.

I was now able to slider the barrell away from the main casing of the engine (without letting the piston drop and smash against the engine), being careful not to damage the thin metal gasket which was sandwiched between the barrell and the engine (although this would probably need to be replaced anyway). A quick inspection of the barrel to identify any major score marks or imperfections came up good, it even still had a thin layer of protective oil, it was all looking pretty tidy.

The piston although a little black and “cokey” looked in good shape if not in need of a clean up. By removing the two circlips either side of the gudgeon pin I was able to use a deep reach socket as a perfect drift to extract the pin, knocking it out slowly with a mallet until the piston was free.

The newly cleaned and polised cylinder head

Setting the three components side by side, I prepared for the clean up so they could be packed away ready to be used in the refit. First came the cylinder head, as previously mentioned this wasn’t in too bad a condition and simply required a few scrubs with a stiff brush and a tab of petrol. This removed 99% of the muck, but to allow the gases to flow even smoother I decided to polish the inner of the head with Auto-Sol, a fine metal polish. This worked very well and gave a perfect shiny, almost chrome like finish.

The same treatment was applied to the piston, but the removal of the rings uncovered 2 grooves of solid carbon which needed to be scraped out with a fine flat head screwdriver. A few rubs of Auto-Sol and it was looking like new again paying close attention to cleaning the crown to match the head.

Now that the barrell and piston were removed, I rotated the engine so that the con rod was at top-dead-center and gave a few good push and pulls to check for any big end bearing play – its always a good idea to listen very carefully when doing this as one of the signs of big end bearing wear is a faint “clicking” sound, and if excessive play is current, you will also feel it in the movement of pushing and pulling.  GOOD NEWS, no play an certainly no clicking – everything seems tight.

With these initial components removed cleaned and checked, it was time to move onto the next stage…