I hope it is okay to add to this sticky. Before installing my chip I found very little guidance, especially with pictures, about this critically important step of cleaning. Only warnings that you can destroy the chip and/or pcm if you don't do it "right", yikes!
I have large hands and the only difficult part of getting the PCM out was getting my fat hands down near the 10mm screw on the wiring harness connector. Go in from above between the hydroboost and the wiring harness.
So you see the needed tools in the bench pic. All you need is the brass brush from home depot, toothpicks, and your thumbnail. I was happy to have my compressed air nozzle to blow away chunks too. No liquid solvent was needed.
You won't be able to get the green circuit board out of the one half of the metal case. This means that one side of the PCM will be harder to clean. It won't look like a card inside your computer.
Start by using your thumbnail to scrape the silicone off of the top of the contacts, both sides. You can't hurt anything with your thumbnail. It feels gritty like scraping clear silicone sealant from glass or a countertop after you install a sink. You will only really be able to scrape the tops of the silver terminals clean.
Then hit it with compressed air to blow away the junk. The more often you blow away the junk, the less time you will waste stirring the junk around. It is hard to tell when you are done scraping when the scraped silicone is still on the PCM.
Then Scrub both sides with the brass brush. I was assured that the brass brush would not be able to remove the silver stuff from anything or damage other parts of the PCM. The silver stayed 100%. I'm not sure that the brush helped as much as the next step though.
Toothpick. The longest and hardest part is removing all the silicone from between the silver contacts. This area is recessed so nothing can get in there except a tool and a toothpick can do no damage but is quite good at removing the silicone. The one pic shows my progress with the toothpick, I started on the right and moved to the left. Blowing and scraping until only the matte black background of the PCM card can be seen. You will know when you have it clean since it is all the same shininess and smooth. Keep blowing it out and scraping.
So then go back over everything with all of the tools. You may did like I do and lose fingernail by scraping. The cheesegrated fingernail looks like silicone so you may think you are getting more but it is just your fingernail coming off.
The very last step is to use the scotchbrite pad included with your chip to scuff the silver contacts. This puts fine scratches into the silver to make good contact but also allows you to verify that you have them clean. If you don't see fine scratches for the full length of the silver fingers then you need to scrape that area with the toothpick.
The scotchbrite pad is the only thing described above that can damage your PCM so just barely use it a tiny bit at the very end.
Here are some pics. I believe that this is what the PCM is supposed to look like.
Also, the finished product. Chip works great with no hiccups. The most noticable thing for me was the transmission shifting was excellent, fast but no bang.
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