valve covers

ok so ive got a bad valve cover gasket and its leaking onto my uppipe and im sick of the smoke. how hard is it to change them? i cant find any info on them in my service manual.

 

Year and model of car? Valve cover gaskets are fairly easy to do on car with a little patience.

 

Assuming you mean on a wrx, what year?

I don't think it's too hard to change them. I did both sides in the car while adjusting valve clearance on my 03. You'll want a 10mm racheting box end wrench for getting some of the bolts out. The driver's side it's little tight to get the cover out if you're gonna do that side too, but you can move a few things and it'll fit. Be sure to get the bolt seals and o rings for the spark plug holes too and just clean everything really well.

 

Ya its a 03 wrx I always forget to say that. What's the torque specsd?

 

3.6 ft-lb for the valve cover shoulder bolts.

 

no kidding. just got mine fixed, luckily my gasket was covered under warrenty from when i ad a bad head casket.

 

If the gaskets are like the ones on my rs, they are kinda a rubber gasket that sits down in a crevice in the head and valve cover. When I took my valve covers off I used some ulta black rtv and put a good amount in the crevices on the head and valve cover, then sat the gasket in the valve cover crevice. I then finger tightened the bolts and let it sit for about 45min to an hour for the rtv to somewhat cure. Then proceed to tighten them to spec. Hope that helped at least a little

 

so its not the valve cover, its one of the oil lines on the turbo. seeing as how i got no clue where they go, and cant find any pics im lost. ill have to see if i can get a better look at it later, but you can see it driping from one of the lines. its not at the turbo, but closer to the block it looks like.

 

The service manual recommends only a small amount of rtv at the corners of the cam caps. Clean the surfaces of oil first too. I followed this and it has worked excellent. I would not put rtv on the valve cover or the entire surface of the head.

Also, do not overtorque the bolts and over compress the gasket. This is easy to do but follow the factory torque setting.

 

Upon further inspection it looks like its leaking from a banjo bolt on the head before the turbo. Should I be able to just snug it up again or is there something else ill need to do?

 

ok and upon even further inspection, it leaking where it meets the fitting on the line. so does that mean i just need a new line? im not sure how its all put together.