Valve cover gasket leaks/weeps

[5Toes]

the elring gasket is cheap, Id try that first. I just tried finding a good pic online but couldnt. Its like a textured synthetic rubber, not silicon but more of a harder rubber. The homemade gasket in this thread is bad ass as Fuuuu, nice work on that dude

[digger]

https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-valve-cover-gasket-11121730229

elring looks like black cardboard with a bead on top? like the VR

[5Toes]

weird, the one I got in my elring upper gasket set from blunt was the style I am thinking of. let me try and find a pic

i remember it being thicker:

just an idea what if you tack two together with liquid gasket to sandwich them together?

https://www.ecstuning.com/BMW-E30-32....5L/ES2873611/

goetze is similar

https://www.ecstuning.com/BMW-E30-32...2.5L/ES260235/

[jeffnhiscars]

I've got an Elring vc gasket here. Will get a pic manana

Elring on top. VR on the bottom. The Elring may be a bit thicker & is def fiber as opposed to rubber. I also think it's denser than the VR

[TobyB]

A few racers put a flow gauge on their valve covers to measure blow- by volume
as a metric for when it's time to rebuild the bottom end.

I thought that was quite smart.

End of thread- jack. I agree, something interfering with clamping pressure seems more
likely than warpage. But if neoprene solves it...

t

[digger]

A few racers put a flow gauge on their valve covers to measure blow- by volume
as a metric for when it's time to rebuild the bottom end.

I thought that was quite smart.

End of thread- jack. I agree, something interfering with clamping pressure seems more
likely than warpage. But if neoprene solves it...

t

it is a good metric, i will use one soon......though with no baseline to compare im not sure what is good or bad. perhaps if i max out the gauge at 10CFM that would be bad based on numbers ive seen elsewhere for other larger engines.

i wont use neoprene its not as oil resistant or heat resistant as nitrile dont want to take any chances

[digger]

got a couple gaskets waterjet cut from 3mm nitrile rubber sheet, turned out better than i thought. not installed one except on a spare head. Atleast i didn't screw up the 3D Cad model, spent ages getting it sorted. the rubber would accommodate slight variation anyway

[digger]

so cleaned everything up including the oil that was on the exhaust manifold gasket, pulled the plugs as a little oil was pooled in the plug hole.

put new nitrile gasket and tignted it all up. the nitrile is pretty soft in comparison to OEM gasket so i didnt want to squash the hell out of it so i used nylocs and tightened until there was a decent amount of compression.

went for a drive and there is oil on the exhaust manifold gasket heat shield below no1 and no 6 leads, it appears as a mist of sorts.

old pic showing area i mean


cant tell where it came from so thought maybe i didn't clean properly first time and the VC gasket is still leaking. so i cleaned everything again and repeated the test drive. mist was back again but the VC gasket is dry.....

had a hypotheses that the exhaust heat shield material was oozing oil from its pores that got impregnated earlier when it was actually leaking. to test this i cleaned everything up and clamped some thin aluminium to the exhaust gasket and went for a drive.

the top of the aluminium sheet was bone dry but it was wet between the exhaust manifold gasket and aluminium sheet so the exhaust heat is bring a little oil from the heat shield to the top of the shield causing some "oil dew"....

going to monitor the new gasket to make sure it doesnt leak long term

[Kershaw]

The water cut gasket looks really nice!

[digger]

The water cut gasket looks really nice!

very precise cutting, turned out better than i thought. still no VC leaks yet

[NotStocke30]

I recall reading somewhere that if the valve cover, and not necessarily the current one, has been slightly over-tightened at any stage the threads could lift the head material causing an ever so slight bump around them..
It might explain the mist in those areas digger..

[digger]

I recall reading somewhere that if the valve cover, and not necessarily the current one, has been slightly over-tightened at any stage the threads could lift the head material causing an ever so slight bump around them..
It might explain the mist in those areas digger..

cant be, the VC and gasket is dry externally, as is the heat shield in the area closest to where it attaches to the head. i covered the heat shield and the cover was dry so its not coming from above.

it is coming out from the heat shield / gasket material when it gets hot. when you look closely at the material there are tiny dimples/pores and at each of those when it gets hot a tiny drop of oil appears to come up from within the heat shield making it greasy. its not a concern as it doesn't leak anywhere just keeps a patch looking greasy with a very slighty film.

you can see the pores in the link

https://www.ecstuning.com/ES210771/

its too much of a PITA to change the exhaust manifold gasket so im going to wipe it every now and then and leave it be.

[digger]

smelt a bit of burning oil and found a weep that definitely coming from the new gasket that was finding its way to the exhaust flange. it looks like it was over tightening deforming the rubber and the heat cycles + stress caused issues. the rubber is just too soft for this application as you will squash the rubber to nothing before getting close to torquing the bolts up which made nylocs mandatory.

so it needs a harder grade of rubber if persisting with something different so its a failure. if i was to do something else id use a slightly thicker gasket (stock is 1.75mm) similar to the what latest materials used by OEM gaskets these days. See below for reasons for slighty thicker gasket.

installed a new OEM gasket. before doing so it removed and reinstalled the rocker shaft lock to make doubly sure the valve cover doesn't get hung up it is very close but with a mirror i can see a fraction of a mm clearance (like FF said its pretty easy for it to get hung up), cleaned everything and torqued with torque wrench to 10Nm, i think Bentley calls for 15Nm but thats way too much.

I bought a gasket from the dealer and it had an embossed grid pattern part on the faces which seems like the best chance for success. Weird thing is it doesn’t match the pictures I’ve seen on ECS for Febi, Goetze, Rein, VRS, MTC or even the genuine one.

[jeffnhiscars]

How does the embossed grid on the OE gasket compare to the Elring I posted

[digger]

Yes that's, it's an elring