leaking valve covers!
 

Hey all! When doing my coolant elbows I discovered a small puddle of oil between my rear valve cover and the intake manifold (underneath the alternator). I don't have milkshake oil or oil in my coolant so I'm pretty sure its the valve cover gasket. So I thought i would just pull them up and re do the gaskets. I thought while I had them up I might as well clean and paint them. Is their anything I should know about taking them off and is it okay the hit them with some engine enamel for a nice clean look. Also anything else I should do while I have the brackets and atlernator and such off? I'm also going to clean as muchof the engine as I can when I'm down there.

Here's a picture of the oil. The alternator is at the bottom of the picture. (Always rotates them sidwise when I post them from the phone)

Attachment 12050

I Pulled the valve covers off the Deuce to paint them. One thing I would suggest is changing spark plugs and wires, as it is so much easier on the rear bank with the covers off. You may want to think about that.

Clean the covers GOOD before painting. I used a high heat crinkle black paint myself
To clean them I used Simple green and ran them through the dish washer (don't tell my wife)

^ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :rotfl:

probably will get the plugs and wires then, should I get coil packs while im at it? I'v heard the L67 coil packs have a little bit of an advantage over the L32's. I think i recall Chibi also suggesting brake cleaner. Im gonna do Red and light blue (figure someone already started the color theme on the car I might as well finish it.

Unless you are upgrading your coils, no need to change them unless they were found to have a problem.
If you're upgrading to L67 coils, get OEM (I've gotten some from the salvage yard) and make sure they have the blue plug underneath. They provide a little improvement to throttle response (nothing crazy). IMO it's a $30-$60 mod. I have L67 coils on my Monte, '02 Grand Am and my wife's '04 Impala.

As for the plugs, don't use Bosch, go AC-Delco or NGK (I've been using NGK platinums from RockAuto, work awesome and can't beat the price).

Coil packs could be pricey CHibi would know more about that. I kept my stock ones on my LS4 and just painted them.

Brake cleaner would work good on valve covers too BTW

hard to see in the pic but i bet its lower intake gaskets honestly

That's what I'm scared of BUT the oil honesly apears to be coming from the valve covers. Plus I don't feel like tearing into the LIM gaskets just yet. And I'm not seing any of the normal signs. The only way to get a better pic is to take the alternator back off.

The LIM gaskets on a 3800 are easy to do. And if you're around 100,000 or more, there is a good chance they are on their way out.

I thought it involved taking a lot off the engine. What all needs removed for the lim gasket?