SaabCentral Forums banner

valve/camshaft cover gasket mishap

923 views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  1stsaab99  
#1 · (Edited)
So I'll just cut to the chase, while replacing my valve cover gasket I accidentally dropped my valve cover on the cement floor and chipped a piece off the edge. I attached a picture so you can see. I ended up completing the job and will continue to monitor regularly to see if there is oil leakage. What I learned doing the job: fishing line/dental floss technique is terrible, just buy a can of gasket tack.

Good news: the cover looked very clean compared to most I've seen on the internet (also attached a picture). I'm not an expert on how camshafts are supposed to look so I attached an image. They seem to look fine to me. What are your thoughts?

Car info: 2007 9-5 2.3T 101,000km

Just noticed the extremely poor photo quality, I'm sorry for this but I can assure you it's the site compressing them. The originals were taken with my iPhone 7, they looked great.
 

Attachments

#2 ·
Everything looks like a clean running engine at 101000 km.

The chip at the edge of the cover probably wont have any affect on sealing.

I use the dowel method (#2 pencils cut down), to just lay the gasket on the head and let gravity work.
 
#3 ·
I've never heard of this method. Could you explain? I haven't done mine yet but will be sooner than later and always wondered why can't you just lay the gasket on the engine first and place the valve cover on top?
 
#6 ·
I agree that the bit you broke off won't hurt anything, as it is outside the gasket groove. I used 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive to hold the gasket when replacing the valve cover. The string method works, but takes 10x longer. Also, if you pull it off again, you are back to stringing it up again. The glue stays in place. I cleaned the cover down with alcohol to clean off the oil.
 
#7 ·
My preferred way is the dental floss method. Basically tie the gasket to the cover at each hole with the floss and then pull it out once it's on before you put bolts in. I tried the anaerobic sealer once with poor results and that stuff is nasty to boot. To each their own but this way you don't have any sticky stuff to play with or wait to dry and that gasket won't be going anywhere during install even if you bump something.