I'm finally digging into my engine to do a head gasket job. I'm going to do a new water pump and timing chain while I'm in there. Since this is my first time this far into an engine, I've been reading up on parts cleaning before putting things back together. I've read a lot of clean this, and don't clean that, and use brake cleaner, or soap and water with a coating of ATF after. Then today I cam across this post Removing rocker arms, cleaning upper engine without full disassembly where some advice was to not clean the rocker arms. The pictures below are of the driver's side rocker arms, the passenger look the same. Any advice on what's best to clean on these engines, and/or what to use? I'm probably over thinking it...

 

Those are very clean as is, no need to clean those.

 

agreed - no need to clean

 

Without complete disassembly cleaning can do more harm than good.

 

Nice and clean!

You might want to keep track of the pushrods. Generally best to put them in the same location from which they are removed.

 

They're all out and labeled, so are the rocker arms. This was taken just before I did that. I had to stop before I got the heads off, hoping tomorrow. Never enough time this time of year ...

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll just clean the gasket surfaces and the outside of the engine and not worry with any parts I've seen, save for a few rusty valve cover bolts I need to freshen up.