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Summary: Use industrial salt intake to clean a valve cover gasket, getting the oil residue off the gasket groove when replacing a valve cover gasket; learn how in this free car-repair video.
Views: 1,258 | Tags: repair, auto, car, automotive, valve, cover, gasket, mechanic, auto repair, car maintenance
About the Expert
Mark Blocker At the age of 10, Mark Blocker started working with his father, uncle and grandfather in residential carpentry, repair addition and new home construction. He ... read more
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Questions & AnswersHelli 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".
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