Well, today I messed up pretty good.
This morning I went to replace the leaking valve cover gasket on my B3, and everything was going smoothly. Cleaned up the channels, scraped the gunk off, seated the new gasket, all was going well. Tightened down the bolts nice and slowly, and thought everything was in order. Then, when coming home, I stop at the parts store to pick up a new PCV valve and install it. As I'm inspecting my earlier handiwork, I notice that the valve cover has fractured where the top right bolt goes through. Broken, and spitting oil vapor. I came from a TBI 350 with stamped metal valve covers, and never had an issue with overtightening, as it was easy to do by feel. I think I may have overtorqued this one, or maybe it was already cracking before the job? I ended up JB welding the crack for now, hopefully it holds well enough until I can find a replacement valve cover.
This morning I went to replace the leaking valve cover gasket on my B3, and everything was going smoothly. Cleaned up the channels, scraped the gunk off, seated the new gasket, all was going well. Tightened down the bolts nice and slowly, and thought everything was in order. Then, when coming home, I stop at the parts store to pick up a new PCV valve and install it. As I'm inspecting my earlier handiwork, I notice that the valve cover has fractured where the top right bolt goes through. Broken, and spitting oil vapor. I came from a TBI 350 with stamped metal valve covers, and never had an issue with overtightening, as it was easy to do by feel. I think I may have overtorqued this one, or maybe it was already cracking before the job? I ended up JB welding the crack for now, hopefully it holds well enough until I can find a replacement valve cover.
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