litletre

I failed inspections, code0304
After reading forums i found that it could be misfiring for a number off reasons, plugs, coil packs, fuel injector, etc. Upon beginning to change plugs i discovered this



Where screw driver is pointing, seems to be origin of leak, but not sure.

I am hoping that someone might have seen this or have a good idea.

Thanks

badattitude

looks like you need to replace valve cover gaskets? my best guess from the picture.

millball

Valve cover leak.

Looks pretty minor.

I'd leave it alone unless it gets a lot worse.

litletre

Wow thanks for the quick response . I'm pretty new to fixing car issues myself. Is that something that i should have a mechanic do? I'm strapped, like most, so im trying to save anyway i can, though somethings might be out of my current technical abilities (for now )

Also any chance that the misfire on cylinder is related or cause in anyway?

millball

Your misfire is not likely related to the pictured small oil seep.

That small leak would not leak out a pint of motor oil in a years time.

There are likely many other areas of maintainance that are more worthy of your time and money.

litletre

Thank you, exactly the kind of answer i was looking for.

83

Valve cover gaskets aren't the kind of job you want to tackle if you haven't been messing around with engines a little more often. It's not too crazy, but it is pretty involved.

It's very common for our trucks to leak there. I would snug up the ones you can reach. My guess is that they're very loose. Mine were. Just don't go too tight! They're supposed to be at 40-something INCH pounds, from what I remember.

So if they're finger tight or not much tighter, just snug them up a tiny bit.

litletre

Yup, loose. Thanks for the heads up on tightness, i would have tightened probably more than i should. Good looking out, than you

Malcolm99

Use a screw driver and socket to tighten V-cover bolts to avoid over tightening, and tightening/snugging up one side of the valve covers is a bad idea IMO. Your plug wires look original, so I would start with the correct NGK plugs and maybe wires if it has high miles, lots of info on the V-cover job on here when it actually starts burning oil on the manifolds.

litletre

So your saying don't tighten? I like that screw driver trick btw. I just finished passenger side plugs, took forever to clean all the gunk off that area. Fired it back up and check engine light is off! Now on to the driver side... Haven't checked to see if oil it's still leaking, but from what your saying is that the fix of tightening bolts on side is a temporary fix and a cause of a more potential problem?

badattitude

I think he's saying all the valve cover fasteners should be equally tight at about 20 inch pounds.

As you can probably tell, to access all the valve cover fasteners you need to remove the throttle body and intake manifold. By the time you get all that removed you might as well replace the gaskets instead of just tightening the fasteners. I had good success using fel-pro gaskets. I'm usually Toyota OEM only but the blue fel-pro VC gaskets worked great for me.

I did VC gaskets, spark plug tube seals, rear cam plugs and the PCV valve grommet all at the same time. I used Toyota FIPG around the 2 cam plugs and the 4 half moons. Sealed it up tight, no leaks.

83

Even tension is the best.

But the spots which are leaking are on the "downhill" side of your covers. Which just so happens to be the side you can reach.

So long as you don't have one side really tight and the other side really loose, you aren't going to warp anything. Just a small quarter turn or so on each of the ones you can reach won't hurt anything. The typical advice I've seen on this site, when the valve covers are leaking, is to snug up the bolts you can reach and see if that fixes the leak. If not, consider doing the gaskets sometime in the future.

Up to you.