Cracked valve cover

Here’s what it looks like after only lightly tightening after backing the bolts out. What do you think? Still urgent?

 

JB weld and run it till you get another. Or $3 epoxy whatever floats your boat.

 

Fuck yeah. I’m about that JB weld life.

 

Jb weld won't work here. LH side under the oil fill cap and on the RH valve cover back outerside near the firewall are cantilevered out and flex. Pretty much the reason when they're over-torqed they crack on both valve covers.

 

Got it. Thought they were surfaces sitting flush against the head. I thought you'd be able to stop any vacuum leaks since it was already being held in place by the bolts. My bad.

 

Yeah all the fastening points of the valve covers have a solid backing, except for those two bolts.

 

Dammit. How will I know I have a vacuum leak? I started it up and idled it after I changed my starter, didn’t notice anything unusual at idle or small stationary revs.

 

money light comes on

That or sound coming from the crack

 

This happened to me lol. I had a guy weld it

 

Welp i couldn’t hear anything coming from the crack. Maybe I didn’t crack it enough. Lol

 

How???

 

He used a tig welder then ground it down. He welded in and out

 

With a welder?

just replace it.

 

Must have been pretty skilled!

 

You hush

 

TBH the crack isn't that easy to see in the pic, do you have a better one or am I blind? lol

 

He did it for like 10 or 15 bucks I think

 

Is this it?

 

It's my belief that the valve cover cracking has more to do with uneven tightening as opposed to too much torque. If the bolts aren't evenly and gradually tightened, you may be causing the valve cover to try to bend. If one side is tightened down pretty good while the other side is loose, when you go to tighten the loose side, the valve cover has to try to bend into place against the surface of the head and it's not going to because it's a cast piece. It's going to break. Your valve cover bolts might have been just loose enough and you didn't tighten them down uniformly. Just like any engine part with multiple bolts, you should tighten the bolts down evenly and gradually in a crossing pattern until you bring it to the torque value or until you think it's tight enough with your calibrated elbow.

 

I bought an inch/lb torque wrench a few weeks ago when I replaced mine so I wouldn't be guessing about torque. Best money I spent haha