Can you clean the oil pickup?

[bmwpower]

Is it cleanable?  Not sure what's inside.  I was thinking of cleaning it out from the backside (it's removed) with some solvent and then blowing it dry.  I assume there is some sort of thin mesh screen behind the large holes as seen when you look in the bottom?

[bmwpower]

bumps.......

[JHZR2]

An engine flush with two subsequent oil changes is the best way to clean any gunk out of your engine.  Since yours is opened, cleaning it with the same sort of solvent would work best.  It has to be something designed to solve and remove the kinds of semi-polymerized carbonaceous chains, degaded VIIS, and other broken-down oil chemistries.

Its nice that you have the opportunity to do this with your engine opened up, as it provides the ability to prevent thinner than optimal flush solvents from meeting your bearings.

I suggest a quality product such as Amsoil engine flush, found here which is a carefully selected blend of solvents and special cleaning agents that dissolve and disperse harmful deposits.

What your benefits will be is TBD - you need to run the test and see what eludes with the solvent... Most of the heaviest gunk will migrate to the filter, the pan bottom, or corners and nooks where there is limited flow accessibility.  However, any varnish formations will need to be removed by a flush with the right chemistry, as they wont come off any other way.

JMH