How to clean off the gunk around leaky injector?

So we've been having a cold start problem with the second Freelander, white smoke, bu**er to start etc. and I immediately suspected the injectors (I had to replace mine a couple of years back). Sure enough when I removed the acoustic cover I could see that one of the injectors had worked loose. The injector itself seems fine, just that it's no longer seated properly.

Now one of the retaining nuts I could reach so I've tightened that up which has improved although not completely fixed the problem. I hope that by tightening the other nut I'll fix the problem but where it has been blowing back past the injector a thick black deposit has built up that completely covers the nut. It's relatively hard but quite brittle (at least when cold) and I can chip bits away but not enough to get down to the nut. A mate (who thinks he's a mechanic but isn't) said to spray oven cleaner on it, leave it 30 mins and then rinse it off but spraying something relatively caustic onto a fuel injector doesn't really sound like a great idea to me.

So any tips or tricks as to how I can remove this in a relatively safe way?

Many thanks

Fritz

personally I would use some gunk or degreaser , use a small brush so u can get right in there

wouldn't use oven cleaner myself, would prefer to get the correct cleaner as injectors are 100 quid each and for the sake of a tenner prevent damage

can use oven cleaner when cleaning the inside of the inlet manifold after removing it from the engine

get a small tooth brush, wire brush or wheel cleaning brush and clean off as much as u can , just take ur time,

after leaving it for a bit can use a spray bottle so u don't put water everywhere and preventing it from going into any electrics

buy yourself a can of compressed air so u can blow out all the junk water etc away, get abit of cardboard or something to protect ur eyes and face and preventing it from going everywhere

hope that helps abit

Hey thanks for the reply gstuart.

I guess that makes sense, it can only be diesel residue so a decent degreaser will get there eventually. I can sort of see the logic in my mate suggesting oven cleaner too now but think I prefer yours. Sounds far safer.

Thanks

Fritz