Can I pull this plate?

[myotis1134]

Hey people,

Doing 120k maintenance, and I'm on the top end stuff. I'm waiting on an EZ-Lok insert kit for a valve cover bolt thread i stripped on the rear valve cover, so I'm currently working on odds and ends to stay productive.

After I pulled the injectors, and disconnected enough shit to pull the wiring harness out of the way, I discovered that the 90 degree hose connector coming out of the plate between the heads was semi-to-completely clogged with gunk (reference pic below). I have been unable to discover anything about this plate, or what it is potentially connected to, but I'm guessing the car will run better with no clogs in the vacuum lines.

Has anyone yanked this plate before? Is it just a cover plate with a vacuum hose port? I feel the need to clean this thing out, so please respond! Thanks in advance.

 

[Irish Pride]

Crankcase vent. Pull it and clean it out. Use RTV to seal it afterwords. Get some new 5/8s hose longer than needed and then cut to fit when you reinstall the Throttle Body.

 

[Irish Pride]

There is usually enough of a lip on the valve cover bolts to get some vise grips to bite and break them loose if you stip them out.

 

[myotis1134]

Thanks for the reply man.

Specifically, I stripped the threads in the head - probably because of my cheap-ass torque wrench, although every other bolt went in easy-peasy, so who knows.

 

[luigisho]

It's always the rear with the funky angle to extract the sheared off bolt. I haven't done that in a long time. I think I used all the curse words and made new ones in those days.

 

[rubydist]

my guess is that someone cross-threaded that bolt at some point in the past so that the threads were damaged and then the correct amount of torque allowed them to strip.

 

[myotis1134]

Plate came out with no issues - other than requiring a contortionist to figure out what bloody angle was required to clear the heads. And installing it without smearing the RTV all over the place was fun too. Worked out tho...



Have a few days to wait for my EZ-Lok thread repair kit to ship from Cali. Hope it’s worth the effort that was required to get it up here.