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[bappy]

hey boys and girls

My rocker cover (offside only) has been oozing oil for a long time now. Took it to a mechanic who couldn't be arsed to actually change the gasket as he took one look at the inlet manifold and thought 'nah...' instead he just took a spanner and tightened all the bolts on the rocket cover. (one of them was fingertight)

Anyway oil still oozes and 200/300 miles later I have developped a tappet rattle on that bank. sounds like it might not be on all 3 cylinders as its a fairly slow tap. that may just be because it's a slow idle though.

I have just changed the oil (30 miles ago) as it was due (had done about 4 or 5k on it) but not the filter as I'm a lazy arse. The tappet rattle is still there. On a previous car with an auto-lashing hydraulic tappet system, an oil change fixed all tappet noise in 2 miles.

Is there something more sinister going on here? I know I need to replace that rocket cover gasket (why oh why are they out of stock and why do I have to buy both banks at once???) but surely a leaky gasket wont set my tappets off will it? It's been leaking for ages.

Is it at all possible that the rattling tappet was caused by tightenning the rocket cover bolts? he was only using a small hand spanner so he can't have exherted that much pressure on it could he???

cheers guys

[MutantCav]

The bolts are meant to be tightened to 8nm, very little over hand tight...so with a spanner indescriminately tightening he could well have over tightened the bolts (and most likely has) and could have made the leak worse...as to whether this would cause the tappets to tap I dont know...but a lack of oil might...

You need to get this sorted or you could/will end up shorting out the leads and cause the failure of the plugs/leads or even dispack, far more costly than sorting out the initial problem...

[Dazzler]

You can buy the gaskets per bank from Vx

Are you sure its not the exhaust manifold thats ticking?

[Big_Al]

VX will sell you one side of cam cover gasket.
Make sure you buy Genuine VX gasket, cam cover bolt 'O' rings  (8 for each bank) and the Black sealant.
Follow the guide on this forum. Done it myself recently - not real easy but not too bad - just take your time.  

[MutantCav]

Yeah good point...ticking could well be a slightly blowing manifold gasket...

[bappy]

exhaust manifold eh? never thought of that. how could I tell?

by 'direct from vx' I assume you mean waltz into any random vx dealership's parts counter (sorry but everything so far has come off of ebay)

I do have a crappo aftermarket gasket set with o rings.. is it worth bothering at all (I have no black sealant) or should I just wait to order parts from the local rip-off-shop?

as for failing leads/plugs/dispack I am already making sure to keep sparky wells fairly dry. do I still have to worry about that?

failing all of my own attempts at the above (im a computer programmer for crying out loud lol) is there anybody south central how can help for a less-than-maindealer price?

cheers, bappy

[tunnie]

Right.

Do NOT use pattern gaskets. They WILL fail a lot quicker than gm ones.

If you can't be bothered to change an oil filter on an oil change i bet you don't want to do the cam covers twice. Follow the guide here. Use gm gaskets and black sealent if you want the job done right.

By leaving them leaking you could cause far more expensive problems.

Does the tick tick tick occur only at idle? Is the tick present at 2k rpm?

[bappy]

lol I do oil filter every 10k and oil every 5k. if that isn't sufficient I'd like to know....

the tick is present all the way across the revs from 500 all the way to 7000. Does that mean anything??

I don't want to spend £30 odd quid on a rocker gkt only to replace it again in a few months... Am I right in thinking that if my breathers were blocked I would see problems with the gaskets on both sides? I equally dont want to spend 7 hours disassembling the breathers etc if I don't have to.

My main problem is lack of time... I leave at 7:30 am for work and dont get in til 6:30pm and all my evenings are booked. The entirety of my tinker-time is saturday afternoons so any job that takes a novice more than 3 hours to do is out of the question as I would be left with no means of getting to work on monday.

I recon I can manage one of the gkts in 3-4 hrs but the breather cleaning looks like it would take me a lot longer. especially the re-assembly. would it hurt to do gkt change and then breathers up to a month later or do gkts burst faster than that when breathers are blocked?

anyway, gripe over, really appreciate you guys' help (and patience lol) I know how many millions of threads there are about gaskets and breathers

cheers,
Ben

[Martin_1962]

Blocked breathers blow the gaskets

[bappy]

Ta,

I am aware of this however I don't know if the breathers are blocked or not as I only seem to have an oil leak on the exhaust side of 1 bank. is there any way to tell without disassembling the breather bits and bobs?

[Entwood]

Once a gasket "blows" then it will relieve the pressure continuously at that point, there are no "sides" .. just a crankcase full of gases, so no further "blows" should occur ....  however the damage is done and the leak will continue.

If the breathers are not cleaned then the change of gasket will just cause an increase in crank case pressure until a gasket blows again, probably the older gasket would go the second time .. but who knows  

There is absolutely NO POINT in  changing cam cover gaskets without doing a PROPER clean of the breather system ..

unless of course......

you have a fetish for changing cam cover gaskets and more money than sense ......

 

[TheBoy]

tbh, you need to schedule in regular breather cleaning anyway.

So, this weekend do breathers, next weekend do gaskets

[bappy]

ok ta will do

how regular should I clean breathers? 10k miles? 20k?

Back to the ticking... the ticking continues regardless of what revs I'm doing. I think this info was supposed to help determine if it is manifold or tappets. Am I right in thinking that ticking at any revs means exhaust manifold gkt? if so what should be my next port of call?

cheers

[Entwood]

If the tick rate is constant with varying revs ... it can't be the tappets ...

The only way it can be is if the tick rate changes proportionately with rev rate .. in both directions, and across the rev range...

[TheBoy]

generally, manifold ticking quietens down when it warms up.  Followers possibly sound likely