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Hi my name is Nate McCullough. On behalf of Expert Village, in these clips, we're going
to talk about the proper way to remove and replace an engine valve cover that is cracked,
excessively warn, rusted out, or otherwise defective. In this clip we're going to talk
about removal of your valve cover bolts. There's going to be a bunch of them, probably in the
range of ten to fifteen. It normally takes a smaller socket. I would suggest using a
3/8 drive or quarter inch. Most of these are very readily accessible. Some of them, depending
up on you particular engine, may be underneath several components. If your bolts happen to
be rough coming out, if they don't feel like they're going to come right out, what you
want is to avoid breaking them off or stripping the cylinder head. So, what you're going to
do is take and work the bolt back and forth just like so. You can see I'm changing the
direction of my ratchet. This one isn't seized or corroded excessively but, for your purposes,
it may be. As you can see, you just want to work it back and forth approximately a quarter
to a half a turn. You'll notice that the bolt will become easier to remove. It may take
a little bit of time to get it out, but it's better than having to send your head to a
machine shop and get it tapped and drilled. Your bolts may be underneath various covers
or things of that nature. These all happen to be exposed. There is a ring of bolts that
runs all the way around the perimeter of your valve cover and there are also two bolts,
one here that you can see in the center and one here up by your timing belt. What that
does is because the plug wires run down through the valve cover, that applies tension to the
center in order to keep the gasket sealed tightly to keep oil out of your plug galaxy.
That's the nice thing about this thing leaking all over the place is they're all very well
lubricated.
Okay, this is the last bolt that we had to take out. Once you got it broke loose, nine
times out of ten you just put the socket on it and spin it out with your fingers. When
you get the last bolt out of it, just due to the nature of the beast and the gasket,
it is designed to adhere and stick these two surfaces together. You may have to pop it
with a hammer or with your hand...we'll give it a hand. Let's see if that works for us.
Nope. I'm going to grab my little mallet here and give it a pop in several locations. Generally,
it's a good idea to hit it on corners. That is where it is structurally the strongest.
There we go. Once you have your valve cover loose, your going to want to try and slip
it out of the way.
And there is your valve cover.