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Helli I am Mark Blocker on behalf of Expert Village. In this segment we are going to cover
proper cleaning of the valve cover. The best way to clean it is with the use of an industrial
solvent tank and these are readily available at all industrial or professional repair facilities.
Not real practical for the do it yourselfer because of size and overall cost.
To properly clean it we need to get the oil residue out of the gasket groove. We want
to get off all of the residue that we can around the valve cover. Just clean it up all
the way around. Get it good and clean and get any excess oil off of it. That way we
can readily identify if we have a leak, a new leak come up by the presence of oil after
everything has been cleaned. But it is real important that we get all of these grooves
cleaned where the rubber seals seat on. If they are cleaned properly they need to have
good contact on both the engine head itself and the inside lip of this valve cover gasket
for them to work correctly. The important thing is that we don't want to damage our
environment by releasing the oil and cleaning of sludge and various contaminants off of
it or the cleaning agent itself. We don't want to allow it get into the environment.
So we want to contain it as much as possible with the use of newspapers, plastic drop cloths,
engine drop pan or pan used for changing oil. Anything of this nature, something that you
could put the valve cover in and do a little scrubbing and cleaning on it with some chemicals
that will contain the chemicals and the oil residue removed from the valve cover. For
this application we will just use a standard drain pan that I use for changing engine oil
and this will keep everything contained so we don't get anything released into the environment.
As I explained earlier we just want to ensure that we get this groove real clean and wipe
off as much oil residue off the valve cover as we can. I am going to use engine degreaser/brake
cleaner and that will eat through the oil real good and allow us to have good clean
surface.
Basically just spray down the valve cover and get it real moist with the cleaning agent.
Spray out those grooves real good. Anywhere there is a little extra oil build up or residue
like maybe on the outside just soak it down real quick. A little tip, sometimes a little
old toothbrush or a little cleaning brush can be a real asset for getting into the grooves.
Basically we just want to get this oil sludge off of there. As I said before the most important
part for the function ability of sealing the valve cover gasket is that this groove in
this area that the seals all be cleaned prior to installing the new gasket.
Please stay tuned and watch our next segment on "Cleaning the Valve Cover, Part Two".