The Care and Feeding of Ponies: Replacing valve cover gaskets

Hello

There is a very large class of people that own 65/66 Mustangs that, as far as I can tell, anyway, have been, for the most part, ignored entirely. They don't really want that 100 pt. show car that is so nice and was soooo expensive that they're afraid to drive it, they also don't want to make their car capable of achieving warp factor three. They just want this car that they dearly love to be able to cruise around smoothly and reliably, without having it dump them out on the side of the road or have it start making weird noises or belching out big clouds of funky-smelling smoke. And I think, truth be told, that this is by far the largest class of Mustang owners. They take their car to some technician when what they actually need is a mechanic, and this, frequently, does not work out very well at all for the owner. They don't want to re-engineer the entire car, they just want someone to fix what broke. These are the people that I am trying help out with this blog. Some problems require a little bit of back and forth, as in, "Try this." "I tried that and it didn't change anything."
" Oh. well, you probably need to try that." " I tried that and it helped, but it still isn't quite right." "Now you need to try this...." If you go to http://www.allfordmustangs.com/ and then go to the classics forums, you will be able to do that with a pretty hefty gathering of some very knowledgeable people that also happen to be very friendly. None of that ridiculous one-upmanship, no flaming or abuse, none of that stuff. Just good, solid advice from people that know what they are talking about.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Replacing valve cover gaskets

I just realized that I had never gotten around to mentioning something that can turn an annoying task into something very quick and simple with one little trick. The first picture is a motor. Next, I have inserted 6 set screws, 1/4-20, into the holes for the valve cover bolts. You then drop the gasket on after applying whatever you like for sealing purposes, apply said sealer to the top of the gasket, drop the valve cover on, then remove one set screw with an allen wrench, put the bolt in, remove another screw, insert another bolt, etc... then snug up the bolts to spec. The set screws keep the gasket from creeping around on you while you get the bolts started.