Lumpy

iTrader: (1)

This is a very easy thing to do if you have a leak around your valve cover gasket and don’t want to pay a shop to change it. It requires only a socket wrench set and you may want to search out an inch pound torque wrench, although I made do without since I couldn't find one. The car does not need to be lifted, nor does the battery need to be unhooked. It should take a beginner around two hours, and about an hour if you have done things like oil changes, spark plugs, and brakes. There are a number of bolts that come off and to keep them all straight, I literally lined them up in a line as I took them off, grouping bolts from a certain area together.

I have tried to make the instructions as descriptive as possible, but will have pics up soon.

Step 1. Remove the bolt that is holding the throttle cable on the front left side of the valve cover. While you’re at it, pop the hose off of the PCV valve that runs out of the top of the valve cover and the breather hose on the right side of the valve cover and move them both out of the way. These may take some twisting, but they do come off.

Step 2. Remove the four bolts from the tops of the ignition coils. The coils, in case you don’t know, are those two boxes on top of the valve cover that the spark plug wires plug into. There are two going into each coil. The trickiest one for me was the back right until I realized that there is a hole in the coil bracket to stick a socket wrench through.

Step 3. If you don’t know where the spark plug wires go by heart, draw a diagram or take a picture so that you can reassemble them later.

Step 4. Remove the two spark plug wires from the coils and the valve cover and set them aside.

Step 5. Remove the grey electrical connector from the left side of the left coil and the right side of the right coil by squeezing down on the button on top of the connector and pulling. Do not pull them by the wire or you may break the wire. They only come off when the release button is pushed.

Step 6. Pull each coil straight out of the valve cover and gently set it aside.

Step 7. You are now finally down to the valve cover itself. Begin loosening the six bolts holding down the valve cover. There is one on each corner, one in the middle of the rear and one in the middle of the front of the valve cover. Begin by loosening the middle, not all the way but gradually loosening a little moving from center bolts to outer corner bolts until they are all loose enough to be carefully removed. I say “carefully” because you can very easily loose one of these down in the engine bay and they are the most critical bolts for this installation.

Step 8. Now it’s time to wrestle with the valve cover. If you had a really bad leak, this should be a piece of cake. If not, get ready to get dirty. You can pull by those coil brackets or take the fill cap off and use that hole to pull by as well. No matter how tempting it is, don’t pry it with a tool because something may get bent or pinched and that could get expensive. Pull it by hand. This is where it might be good to have a friend around for help. I didn’t though, so it is possible to pull it on your own.

Step 9. Once the valve cover is off you will probably want to put it on some newspaper because it will be wet and oil will come out of the fill hole if you took off the cap. Get a rag and wipe off the engine, where the valve cover mounts to the engine so that the new gasket can seal properly. Engine degreaser is your friend but spray it on the rag, not into the channel or the engine.

***Optional Step*** Since the valve cover is off, you may want to take this moment to polish and wax it. It is never as easy to get to as it is now.

Step 10. Pull the old gasket out of the channel under the valve cover edge. Chances are that it will be baked on in some places and will break. If this happens, try to pull the gasket going the other way. If you just can’t get it out, wrap a flat-head screw driver in a rag and carefully pry at it. You want that channel and the top of the engine as clean as you can get them. Again, engine degreaser is your friend.

Step 11. Push the new gasket into the channel. If your gasket came with new spark plug tube seals (those four rubber circles under where the holes for the spark plugs go through the valve cover) now would be a good time to pull the old ones off and push the new ones on. Optionally, you can put some RTV gasket sealant on the gasket, sparingly, but it is not required.

Step 12. Put the valve cover back onto the engine and line all of your bolt holes up. Put the bolts in and tighten them in the same center to corner, gradual way that you loosened them. Again, tighten them little by little moving from the center bolts tightening some, and moving to the other bolts tightening them some until they are all down. The torque specifications for this are 36-48 inch pounds, or 3-4 foot pounds. I wasn’t able to find an inch-torque wrench at all, let alone a foot pound torque wrench that went down that low. Instead, I used the socket wrench but only tightened with my hand at the top of the wrench, not down on the handle, to avoid over-tightening and only put them on hand tight. You don’t want to over tighten because it can ruin the new gasket, causing another leak.

From here, reassembly of everything else is the reverse of installation. This is where lining the bolts up comes in use, to remind you to move from the coils to the wires to the hoses and throttle cable.