I'm sure it's been covered before, but should I still go through the time/trouble of cleaning my intake valves, even if installing a WMI kit is immediately imminent? I'm sure it would be ideal to pre-clean them, and I even bought a blaster and fine walnut shells, but I'm honestly just tired of all of the tedious crap every other weekend, and I still have a lot more to do. So, even though I realize it's not ideal, should I just let the meth/H2O do the work for me, even if it does take longer and burn the gunk in the combustion chamber? Just trying to justify being lazy for once. Feel free to tell me to stop being stupid and lazy.

Intake valves aren't TERRIBLE, and currently look like this at 52K miles:

 

If it were my car, I'd clean the intake prior. Just my opinion tho.

 

I think I'm going to clean them with the fine walnut shells. I think (hope) it might not be too bad with my new Harbor Freight blaster and "RKX Universal Carbon Cleaning Walnut Blaster Adapter." My biggest fear is just rotating the crank to the perfect position to totally close each set of intake valves, so I don't get the shells into the combustion chamber.

 

I share your fear

but I say clean before anyway.

I believe in you.

 

Well, I was going to clean them last night, but ran into some difficulties with the Mina crank pulley, which I'm about to share in the the following thread: "Mina Gallery Lower Pulley for 2011 XFR"

Hopefully, I'll get the crank squared away soon, then I can tackle the intake valves.