Valve cover gasket leak

This is an easy one now days as long as your cover is not broke or split.

Remove the valve cover, spray it completely with "Purple Power" and at minimum use a fiber scouring or Scotch Brite pad to really clean the gasket surface of the valve cover. Purple Power and the grease/ oil it cleans, washes off with water.

Now "rag off" as much oil as you can off of the top of the cylinder head.

Now scrape off any crap that has ever been applied (like silicone) on either surface.

Final cleaning- use a nice clean rag, like an old tee-shirt. Saturate that puppy with spray can brake cleaner and wipe down the gasket surfaces on the cover and the head. Let it dry.

We should now have clean bondable surfaces for our adhesives.

Obtain- have on hand a "Felpro" VS50244R valve cover gasket. No substitutions! Amazon even has it! A local parts store should or can order it. This is a really good gasket.

Next step is to attach the gasket to the valve cover, so it will never move!

Silicone has it's place if used correctly, but if it is used on both sides of a flimsy gasket, with far spaced bolts, the gasket tends to slide or suck under the cover and will leak forever!

We will use contact cement. See my pic below. I get this a Wal-Mart in the hardware section, usually hidden on the bottom right side of the shelf. Hardware stores have it too. It's yellowish in color and somewhat stringy.

Ever so sparingly coat the valve cover's gasket surface and the top gasket surface of the new gasket with contact cement.

Orient the gasket before you apply it, as you don't want to apply it to the wrong side.

These glued surfaces will stuck to each other soon. The glue doesn't have to be thick, just completely wet the surfaces.

Wait a good 12-15 minutes then carefully stick them together. They should bond instantly so place them on there perfectly with the holes lining up.

Use your fingers to mash them together well.

Now we have a well sealed gasket to valve cover that will not move or suck under.

Last part. This is where using silicone comes in.

Coat the bottom of the gasket with maybe 1/16th of an inch of silicone.

Carefully place it on the head lining up the bolt holes so that it doesn't scoot around and wipe off the thin silicone you just put on!

Sometimes if I'm in the mode, when placing covers and such on, I'll duplicate the bolts with longer ones. Let's say place 4 inch long bolts in the holes of the cover.

Now hover over the other surface and screw the longer bolts in the holes. Temporarily of course.

Now the holes line up perfectly. Ease the cover down. Now replace the long bolts, one at a time, with the original shorter bolts.

We use the same method when connecting the transmission to the bell housing, we chop off the heads of maybe an 8 inch bolt and round them off. Screw them into the bell housing, start the transmission holes over them. Presto! Instant guides for a heavy cumbersome piece of equipment.

Let's tighten the bolts, No in/lb torque wench? I'll fist one hand over the top of the ratchet. I'll tighten till the ratchet handle gets uncomfortable twinxt my fingers. Not hurting my finger. No cheating pulling on the handle or using your other hand!

Is this process do- able?

The Medic

This or something really similar, the plain black stuff in a tube is fine too. This oil resistant type was not around back during the dinosaur years!

The Medic

Are we fixed yet?

The Medic

Better get one of these if time is going to be an issue,

It might say it all for you to others who might not understand,

if you go into "that" depression that I experience from time to time.

Other than uncontrollable screaming and crying, and sometimes long silence periods.

Symptoms may be like using a popular laxative.

I took the liberty of copying and pasting a warning from their label below.

Ask a doctor before use if you have
noticed a sudden change in bowel habits that persists over a period of 2 weeks.

Good luck, keep us posted, see item below.

The Medic