Valve covers, intake, etc.

[Carmievg]

Greetings. I've been reading this forum off and on for several years now, but this is my first post. I'm sure it's been addressed somewhere else, but every time I start reading a thread I get lost in it and never find what I'm looking for. So, here's my issue: I've got smoke rising up from the back side of the engine. My first guess was valve covers, so I ordered up a set of valve cover and intake manifold gaskets. Got home from work Friday morning, all set to tackle the job. Then I got to looking a little closer at the issue, and it would appear that the only way to remove the intake is as a complete assembly; There does not seem to be a way to just remove only the upper manifold. Is this a correct assumption? Also, it appeared that to remove the intake, I should probably separate it from the throttle body. Sounds easy enough, but the intake gasket set does not include the TB gasket. grrrr.. So, after checking a few of the threads on the forum here, I saw a few people suggesting that the oil pressure sender/switch may be doing all the leaking. Lifted the car, crawled under, wiped it all clean, then ran the motor for about 30 seconds or so. Sure enough, there was leakage. From a replacement motor in the garage I pulled that sender (condition unknown) and replaced the first one. It did not seem to leak, so I put the car down and drove it around for a bit. The smoke is still happening, which leads me back to my first diagnosis, the valve covers. So here's the question: Does the entire intake, upper and lower, need to come off as a complete assembly? And is there coolant involved at all?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

 

[kevinspann]

Valve covers or rear cam seal, or both.

Intake comes off as a complete assembly, it bolts directly to the cylinder heads. It only looks daunting, but isn't bad. There are 4 braces to remove, two in the front and two in the back, one of which has a ground strap. A few vacuum lines and a couple connectors.

You can leave the throttle body on the intake if you are worried about the gasket, you just have to pull the throttle cable and cruise cable off. There are two small coolant hoses that attach at the bottom of the TB, but usually aren't too hard to remove.

Is it a manual or automatic? All autos and California MTX cars have EGR, which has to be unbolted from the intake as well.

Nothing too difficult, just a little tedious for someone who is doing it for the first time.

 

[SHOdded]

If there is leakage from the rear valve cover, could be the gasket has rolled and thus is not properly installed. It's tricky doing the install there without either using some sort of guide bolt(s), or a dab of RTB to hold the gasket in position. Search for more info ...

 

[zak]

Check your oil level sender in the rear of the oil pan, those can leak.

 

[Carmievg]

Thanks for the instant replies!! It is an MTX non-California model. I was looking at the oil level sender as well, but that didn't seem to be leaking. I know there are other leaks in the car; it's got 275k on the clock, and the engine, from an '89, has about 200,000 on it. I had that engine swapped from my first SHO, a hail damaged steal I snagged for $800 in about 2001 or so. I've never had to take any of the engine apart, and, well, as I'm sure you all understand, I just can't junk it. I have ordered a new TB gasket from Rock Auto (didn't see the promo codes until afterwards of course), so I'll be going back under the hood Thursday morning after work, weather permitting.

As for my being a first timer, that is accurate, to a point. More a case of being out of practice. My first 'project' was a '79 Thunderbird which got a 400 transplanted from a pickup installed in it, after a complete rebuild. This was in the early 90s. That anchor is now in a '77 F-150, which I lovingly refer to as my 8 cylinder yard cart. That swap was done about 12 years ago. Not being able to do the job I wanted to last Friday, I was able to do a half dozen other little things that have been nagging me for months if not years. Among those was changing the plug wires. Yes, the shop vac and the air hose were put to good use getting as much oil out of the plug wells as possible...

 

[rubydist]

well, unfortunately changing the plug wires before you changed the valve cover gaskets was probably a very bad idea.

The spark plug wells tend to fill with oil when the intake gaskets are old and hard. This oil will ruin your new plug wires pretty quickly, so you need to get the valve cover gaskets changed pdq to avoid killing your new wires.

 

[Carmievg]

Ok. Mother Nature finally allowed me a day in the sun, and while I'm not going to call it an exercise in futility, I did get the valve cover gaskets replaced. Got it all back together and fired it up, expecting it to smoke for a while to burn off whatever crap dribbled on it while doing the job, and also whatever residual oil happened to still be there. Well, it burned some oil off. Then more. And more. The valve covers don't seem to be leaking anymore, but upon crawling underneath it, wiping stuff clean, and starting it again, I see that the front main seal is far worse than I'd expected. Poking around in the forum, it seems that that seal can be replaced without dropping the oil pan. That is a good thing, because there's no way the exhaust studs are gonna come out peacefully. I wonder if just fabbing a heat shield for the front cat would be enough to keep the smoking to a minimum...?

I reread this thread many times in my head while R&Ring the intake and gaskets. And no, it does not seem that the cam seals are leaking all that bad. Seepage, yes, but there's a lot of miles on that motor. This page:

http://www.shophoenixproject.com/lower60k/lower60k.htm

Seems t have all the information I need and more. Again, thanks for the input.

Chris

 

[rubydist]

if the crank seal is leaking that bad, chances are nearly 100% that the cam seals are also. since you have to take the timing belt off anyway to get to the crank seal, the intelligent thing to do is to change the cam seals at the same time. its only a few more dollars and another half hour or so of time. then you know you have it handled.

 

[Carmievg]

Yeah, that's what the voice of reason tells me too. As does the Phoenix SHO site. Of course I'd get a new timing belt, and whatever else was going to be removed in the process. It would only make sense. Any chance that a steel oil filter wrench would work as a strap wrench?