valve cover and oil burning

wigglesrewind

Registered User
so my 92 bird is burning a decent amount of oil out from under the hood, never noticed this before. just found it a few days ago after i changed my oil, noticed that the back corner(near the firewall) valve cover bolt had worked its way all the way out so i tightened it back down but its still leaking. how long do you think it would take to burn off all excess oil if i stopped the leak. i only ran the car for 5 minutes after i fixed the bolt and it sat for a good 2 days between when i changed my oil and when i fixed the bolt. had to work and next couldnt get out there to fix it.

anyways how much driving do you think it would take to burn off all the oil if i fixed the leak? a day? a week? i really dont want to do valve cover gaskets on this thing because it seems like a pain and im worried if i start removing intake parts that now matter how careful i am im not going to be building any boost when i get it back together.

anyways if i do have to do valve cover gaskets has anyone done a write up on it? my haynes manual describes doing a 3.8 NA which is pretty different. im kinda in a quandry because i dont really want to do this, but the car has almost 170k on it so it may be time, but from what i know the previous previous owner did the headgaskets like 20k miles ago so theres a good chance the valve cover gaskets got changed too.

thanks for listening guys i really appreciate any of your input. i love this site almost as much as i love my bird. :D
 
I've changed valve cover gaskets a number of times, and can help of it comes to that. Here's what I recommend first:

Get a couple cans of engine degreaser. After ensuring that the valve covers are torqued properly, clean up the excess oil with the degreaser. Be sure to do this when the engine is cool. Then after rinsing, and allowing to dry, drive the car for a couple/few days. Check frequently for additional oil. If there is more oil, then minimum, gaskets will be required.

There are 3 big reasons oil leaks from the valve covers. First is loosening of the bolts holding the valve covers on. This is the easiest to deal with as you just have to re-torque the bolts and you're good to go for a while.
Second is over torquing the bolts, smashing the gasket so it does not seal. Little bit more labor intensive, requiring the removal of the valve covers to replace gaskets.
Third is the same as the 2nd, but the over-torquing lead to cracking the valve cover, which would require replacement valve covers.

So clean it up with degreaser, then watch it closely for a few days. Any additional oil, and you'll be digging into it. Like I said though, I've done it a number of times, and can help you out with "how to's" if you need it.
 
thanks for your help supercoupe, any ideas on how i get my hands back there lol ;)

i will try it out and hopefully it stops burning oil since i retorqued the bolt
 
wigglesrewind said:
thanks for your help supercoupe, any ideas on how i get my hands back there lol ;)

Yeah, take a bunch of stuff off first! I've done it enough from leaking valve covers, replacing rocker arms, replacing rocker arms again, valve cover leaking again, etc that I've got it down to getting the valve covers off in less than an hour. It's not too difficult of a task, but if it's your fisrt time, allow about 4 hours to get everything off, and back on. It shouldn't take that long, but it could, if you run into something unforeseen.

You do want to get some engine degreaser back in there as well. Otherwise you won't really know if you've got new oil leaking or if it is still just residue from when it was leaking. The engine degreasers cost around $3.00 per can and they can really get that oil off. I've used it on both the SC's I've owned with good results. My first SC was leaking oil from moth valve covers, and the lower intake. I put 2 qts in the engine in less than 2k miles. Cleaned it up so I could see where it was leaking from, then went about fixing it. The front seal was also beginning to leak, and that was the only place that it leaked after I fixed the top end. I also didn't go through oil anymore. So clean it up, then find out where it is leaking from so you know what to fix.
 
yeah it seems pretty tight down in there does changing the valve covers involve removing the supercharger? i can tell that the intlet/outlet pipes need to come off as well as the back of the intake/TB was wondering if i can get by without removing the plenum and charger if i do have to do this job.
 
It all has to come off. You can remove the TB, inlet plenum, supercharger and upper IC tube as one unit. That's the easy part though. The bad part is if you have to replace the driver's side gasket. Here's a pretty basic step-by step to get it done. I'm doing this all from memory so I may miss something.

1. Remove intake (top of air box, MAF, and inlet tube)
2. Remove TB, inlet plenum, sc and upper IC tube (there's a couple mounting points to look for on the upper IC tube that may throw you for a loop)
2a. Passenger side is ready at this point, simply remove valve cover and replace gasket.
3. Remove stock or 2x IC
4. Remove lower IC tube (Again, there are a couple mounting points that are hidden here, and a real challenge to get out. I'll see if I can scrounge up some pics of where they are)
5. Remove driver's side acc'y bracket (just loosen it up and pull it away enough to get the lower IC tube out.)
6. Optional: Remove intake plenum from lower manifold. By doing this it helps, you don't have to, but it really makes it a lot easier.)
7. Now you're ready to remove the driver's side valve cover.

I'll have to get some torques specs as I don't have them in front of me now. I do know that the valve covers are only torqued to 8 ft lbs. I'm not sure about the rest.

Before you do this, you want to make sure that you have everything you need to get it all back together. The big thing is something to seal the IC joints. I recommend some IC gaskets from Tbird88 (Wynn Carter) as they are reuseable and work great. I'll see what I can do to scan my shop manual when I get home. I've got the Ford manual for '92s.
 
is it necessary to drain the cooling system for this job?

i have copper rtv for the IC joints, seems to work pretty well when ive used it in the past.
 
For the IC tubes, you can use copper RTV.... Of course I had the top end gasket set from Felpro, but you want to get the rubber/silicone gaskets for the valve covers as those hold alot better than cork or paper gaskets.

When you torque down the bolts on the valve covers, keep repeating every 10 minutes until the bolts actually hold the torque..... you'd be surprised how loose they become in just 10 minutes after the first torque :eek: . I repeated mine about 7 times before the bolts would hold the torque, then I did it 2 more times for good measure.

Doing this will cut down the likely hood the covers will leak for a long time.

Frit
 
To avoid stripping the valve cover bolts and still get a good seal, I coat each side of the gasket with Permatex Ultra Blue RTV. Makes it a little harder to remove the next time, but I never get any oil leaks.

David
 
thanks for all your help guys, its still leaking though nowhere near as bad now that i retorqued the bolt. now i can at least drive it until i have time to do the job
 
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