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My 95 LS with 170k miles has been lacking performance as well as gas mileage so I took a look under my hood today to see if anything was amiss and I noticed some oily,gunky,dirty material along the brim of the valve cover and well as on the back of the valve cover. I check my oil regularly and I don't appear to be losing any as far as I can tell. I think I put in an extra quart of oil every 8,000 miles. However I'm concerned I may need to replace my valve cover gaskets and possibly some seals but I'm just not sure what I'm looking at here. Can anyone tell me if my valve cover gaskets or other seals are leaking based on these pictures below? Thanks.
Just a quick tip on those VCG screws - without taking anything off, just try to tighten them slightly. On my car, I found many of them to be completely loose - presumably due to the gasket compressing over time. I don't remember what the torque spec is, but if they are loose, it can't hurt to torque the ones you can reach to spec. Easy to do. I doubt this would have anything to do with performance. Once you tear things apart to address that, you can put in new gaskets and fix it properly.
Ditto. Tighten them with a 1/4" ratchet. Put the head of the ratchet in your palm and give them a good twist. Many times most of the bolts are less than finger tight. This usually slows the leak greatly but doesn't usually totally stop it.
Regarding your poor performance and fuel economy, has your ECM ever been rebuilt?
Tightening mine made zero difference. New gaskets fixed it.
Sounds good. On my car, tightening did help a little. And it is literally something that can be done with one tool and without removing any other parts - takes a couple of minutes. Adding a little tightness to a completely loose screw is usually only going to help things.
I was surprised that some of the screws were completely loose, and I understand that is not uncommon in this situation as the VCGs compress and harden with time and heat.
I have new VCG's standing by, waiting for me to need to tear other things off one day so I can fix it right, once "I'm in there." Until then, I'm just suffering with a car that runs perfectly.
I'll see if I can tighten up the bolts and try to clean the residue up. I'm replacing my ECT sensor tonight also to see if that improves my performance issues too. Also no I have never had my ecu rebuilt, should I look into that?
I've got 280k on my original gaskets, they're barely wet with some oil residue. I bought replacements back in October 15' but until they start dripping oil onto the manifolds, I'll probably just leave them, or do the adjustment to the screws.
04-17-17, 04:38 PM
Leaking valve cover gasket?
