today i took off my valve cover to put some gasket maker on it because it had a really small leak.. probably from when i took it off to paint it. anyway i put all the bolts back on and everything and i thought it ran fine when i went to walmart and back but then i noticed there was smoke coming from the hood. i look behind the engine and its pretty oilly back there. i look under the car and there is oil all splattered on the bottom and a puddle on the ground. the seals and stuff behind the valve cover are kinda wet with oil but it couldn't have drained the whole thing. my dad is worried it could be a cracked block which i highly highly doubt. my other friend thinks it could be a blown head gasket.i could use some help on this one. i just Tee'd my pcv valve to my crank breather hose on the intake because of my 4g93 manifold i just put on. my friend is turbo and said he didn know if this happened with N/A but i may have pressurized the crank case..... just throwin it out there.

please help i don't have money to take it to the mechanic.

 

hm...i'm sorry to say this, but right away when you saw the leak you should've just waited to get a valve cover gasket. All you may need is just a new valve cover gasket.

 

it was more like an oil secretion cuz you could hardly tell and stuff... just that above the header it was all nasty lookin

there is also a valve cover gasket... and the goop

 

yeah, usually when u see a small leak around the flanges of your headers you technically need a new valve cover gasket. Oil secretion or just a small leak..slowly in time it could cause more problems.

 

Sometime when you dont tighten the valve cover evenly it cause a unsquare bond between head and gasket resulting in small leaks. Before changing degrease and clean area where it was leaking around the head etc.. and re-fit the valve cover, test it out and go from there.

Best to use the OEM valve cover gasket otherwise if you use gasket maker put a generous amount evenly. Semi tighten and wait for 15mins, then hand tight each one based on manufacturers tightning sequence. Tighten by hand the torque rating is about the same tighteness anyway, over tightening will cause the cover to deform.

 

Valve cover gaskets usually can't be reused. This is what happens when you attempt to do so.

 

ya valve cover gaskets shouldnt be re used. gasket makers are not really recommended either thus many car owners still do it.

 

yeah well i ran it yesterday and let it idle and nothing happened so it was time to take it off the stands and drive it, i drove it sorta hard and i stopped at the store and popped the hood and it was smoking, i concluded that it was the oil that had not finished like burning or whatever it does when its all over your midpipe. and i don't think it leaked, nevertheless i new gasket is coming in tomorrow from autozone so yeah. i still don't think all that oil came from the valve cover. i think it lost like a quart, and there wasn't any oil on the intake manifold.