Don't supposed you could change post #17 to keep all torque specs in the same units. The post says 10 nm for the valve cover and recommends 10 ft-lbs for the spark plugs. 10 is easy to remember but guess which units I remembered for the valve covers...the last one I read...so I wound up stripping the first valve cover bolt.

FYI, you can helicoil with the valve cover still on. I recommend using small pieces of tape wrapped around tweezers to get all the metal shavings out....repeat till no more shavings.

10NM is 7.3ft/lbs. I doubt the bolt is weak enough that 2.7ft/lbs would shear the bolt off. Were you using a tire torque wrench, like one that reads up to 110ft/lbs? Is so, it probably is not that accurate for measuring just 10ft/lbs.

I don't even use a torque wrench for the spark plugs. Get them hand tight, and then give it 1/8th to 1/4 more turn.

I was using a craftsman torque wrench I use sometimes for my road bike.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...u=00944978000P


Again this was a valve cover bolt that stripped, not a spark plug. Though I normally don't use a torque wrench for spark plugs as well but I did this time as I don't normally strip bolts either.

I really wish I had stopped sooner as there seemed to be plenty of resistance at 7.5 ft/lbs but it was the first bolt and I had 10 ft/lbs in my head.

I did this like 3 years ago.. I also do have torque wrench if anyone wants to come over and borrow it.. I live in Mt. Laurel, NJ

I think I mentioned before, you can fix a stripped bolt / thread in the head for the valve cover bolts by using a slightly longer bolt than factory.

I know this a dumb question but what does it mean to torque the bolts to 10 nm?

10 newton meters, comes out too about 7.5 pound feet of torque

nm means newton-meter. It's a value of torque, used as an alternative to ft-lbs (foot pounds) of torque. Most torque wrenches will have both newton-meters and foot pounds on their scales.

well i did this last night .. after i put everything back together and turned on the car a whole lot of white smoke started coming out from the passngr side of the valve cover i thought it was leaking oil but the smoke stopped after 10mins .

drove it to work and well it was fine but im wondering if was just burning oil that dripped on the headers when i removed the valve cover.. or im looking into something serious ?

If you don't have any more smoke coming off the passenger side of the engine, it was the oil that was spilt on the exhaust. If it is leaking, you'll know !!!

These valve cover gaskets are famous for folding out of place in the rear by the cam where it's hard to see and it creates a really bad leak, so just watch your oil level, and check the back of the engine for any leaks. I use a dentist type mirror that has a light built in.
Other than that, your're GTG.
:wink:

The first time I did this. It folded in the rear and it ran like absolute sh*t. After effing up that gasket, bought another and took my time a lil more. Now it's good as new! Really take your time putting the valve cover on. Dong tighten untill you know for sure that it is sealed.


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You can also use some type of silicon to keep it from folding, no?

Yes. I used some silicone sealer or something. I forget what it's called


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GOD stupid control + R... trying to type RTV and refreshed the page 2wice after i wrote like an essay :( well i did use RTV on the half moon... i followed this post word by word and i did everything right... gasket didnt fold took me around 5-6 attempts to get it to sit right w/o it folding since i didnt remove the fire wall in front of the filters is a PITA w/o doing so btw... so i recommend to any1 doing this in the future to remove it... i did do this at 10-11pm ish and had to go to work... at 11.. so left at midnight to let the RTV cure drove 40miles to work and back and drove fine idle improved but now i hear a clank coming from the intake manifold sounds like if theres a screw in there bouncing around or something... well i rechecked everything the next morning and everything looked fine the smoke stopped that same night after like 15-20mins or idling

Nice write-up. Yep, that's what you have to do to change the gasket. It is a "fight" to get the cover back on since the engine is so close to the firewall, but it will go on correctly.