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So I replaced both gaskets and now they’re smoking. I usually do see smoke coming from the valve covers after replacing the gaskets on other cars, but this seems to be lasting a little longer than normal. It doesn’t smell like oil, but it does smell like the degreaser that I used before I started working on it so I could find the oil leak. The smoke is coming from both covers. I’ve ran the car around 15 mins at least.
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The problem come from the valve seals. The seal is made whit rubber. Over time this rubber retract and let more oil to lubricate the upper cylinder.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_4-F-m1FI[/video]
I gotcha, but the smoke would be blue and would come from the exhaust. The smoke is white and is coming from the valve covers themselves.
Sometimes it takes a while for the residual to burn off. Try inspecting around the valve covers with a telescopic mirror to see if your still leaking.
That’s what I was thinking red. Just checked with a mirror as mentioned and I don’t see any leaks. I drove it around one more time and I do notice a decrease in smoke, but it dark outside, so I could be wrong lol.
You know, if some degrease was applied on the exhaust manifold and exhaust pipe, It’s really likely to have smoke here. Otherwise I see noting wrong. You saw no hose linking oil and liking coolant. So the only thing left is the degreaser you use to change your 2 gaskets.
If you used RTV on the gasket this might be the cause. I don’t recommend the use of RTV on a gasket as it can actually create a leak let alone create a mess that needs to be cleaned up by the next person that services the valve covers. I’m not saying that’s what you did but if the IS what you did I’d recommend removing the valve covers again, cleaning up the RTV, and replacing the gaskets. Do not put RTV on them after the second replacement.
It’s also possible that one of the gaskets got rolled during installation. It can be difficult to get them on sometimes.
Thanks guys! It actually ended up being the degreaser cuz the person said the smoke went away haha. Thankfully! I actually used a high tack instead of the rtv that I scraped off of it because alldata said to use a liquid gasket. Hopefully it doesn’t give me problems in the long run like you said, eric :(…
Same thing happened to me when I did my valve covers. Took a good hour of driving to get the smell completely gone. And still sometimes when sitting at a light or a drive-thru, the manifolds would heat up more, also heating up the heat shields above them, causing a little more to be burned off. I used brake cleaner to clean up the manifolds after the replacement so I didn’t get a whole lot of smoke. It made it really easy to check for new leaks since the manifolds were bone dry after the brake cleaner.
Glad you got it sorted out and didn’t use RTV like cake frosting. Thanks for the update and for using the ETCG forum.
Very happy to hear you didn’t use RTV, well done. Also, thanks for keeping us up to date and for using the ETCG forum.
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