Valve Cover Gasket Replacement Experience and Tips
 

I was able to sneak in replacing my valve cover gasket today between some rain showers. I was happy with the condition under of things under the valve cover, no sludging was evident. The valve cover itself had some junk on it but I cleaned it up before putting it back on. Overall, Id say that my AutoRx cycle probably did its job, I might even add some AutoRx into my routine oil changes from now on.

Ok so here are some tips for anyone that is considering doing this maintenance item on your own.

1) Remove the 4 allen head bolts holding the crankcase breather and secondary air hose hard lines to the head first. Follow that up with removing the 2 small hex head bolts that hold the secondary air hard line to the heat shield. Finally, disconnect both hard lines at the 90 degree elbows near the TIP. The secondary air pump hard line was very difficult to get loose, I had to get my hand down to the bottom of the hard line and steady that while pulling up on top. With both loose, you should be able you to move both up and over.

2) Remove the crankcase breather at the back of the engine (the 3 way piece).

3) remove the coilpack electrical connections and the ground cable. Leave the coilpacks in for now.

4) Remove the 9 valve cover hex nuts. Now remove the coilpacks, I felt that by leaving them in until this step I kept the possibility of anything getting into the spark plug chamber to a minimum.

5) use a flat head to pry up the valve cover. Now remove the valve cover and remove the old valve cover gasket. Clean the surfaces and install the new gasket, dont forget the spark plug gasket or to place the 6 dabs of sealant needed per the Bentley manual.

6) Reinstall the valve cover and torque the valve cover nuts to 10lbs. Stand back and admire your work.

This wasnt very difficult at all. the hardest part is getting the hardlines loose. everything else is just removing bolts or parts. Next up for me is my exhaust manifold, hopefully I'll remember the camera!

in my experience, the ONLY hard part is removing hoses
 

In my instance, i did not disconnect the hard tube on the left of the heat shield. I tried to very carefully pull it back while lifting the valve cover off.

I was extremely worried about tearing the 90 bends, but it seemed to be ok.

I'd recommend trying to remove the 90 bends as described in step #1.

The other hard part for me was breaking loose the 3 way tube on the back of the valve cover. I used a flathead screwdriver to carefully pry around it to loosen it. Once it was off, it was easy to get back on and off again.