I foolishly tightened some screws around the engine

About two months ago I thought to myself hey...your engine is leaking a little bit of oil...might be a good idea to grab a wrench and start tightening screws on the engine. I realize what a dumbass thing that was to do. I now am aware that a lot of the screws in that area are done to spec.

I'm attaching a picture with the screws I messed with circled.

It's been two months and I haven't noticed anything unusual. Am I in the clear? I really can't believe I thought that was a good idea to do without researching it.

 

they have been known to loosen slightly over time. My 3.4 was leaking years ago and I tightened them and it stopped. Now I'm replacing the seals. It bought be 5 years though...

 

No worries man looks like valve cover gasket needs a replace. You sir are golden don't even give it a second thought.

 

No broken bolts good to go

 

You would have been fine if you had been doing this on a 2nd gen. Ufortunately tightening valve cover bolts on a 1st gen means you now have herpes.

 

I read about that in the FSM. I guess they got a bad batch of cursed bolts from a plant in Georgia built on an ancient Native American burial ground.

The upside is now you have higher engine compression and should be making a few more hp as long as you run premium fuel so you don't start pinging.

My advice is to find a anti-hex write up that was kicking around on TTORA and Custom Tacos back in the day and get a torque wrench to tighten those suckers to 53 in lb. There's a rubber washer on the bolts so all you did was just compress it a little more than it should be unless you gorilla'd it.

 

Lol oil leaks, OP tightens bolts to stop oil leak, calls himself a dumbass... But does he have an oil leak?

*insert but did you die meme.

 

What!!??? This explains the damn rash

 

Yep, he's gonna get the Herp.

 

Do some cleaning around the ones you touched. Use something like Simple Green and a old toothbrush to get the area looking good. Drive for a week and then take a look to see what happened.

 

Simple green won't help, but look into valtrex.

 

a good chlorine scrub will work also.

Don't ask how I know