Jun 6 - gasket

I guess the major thing for Monday was replacing the valve cover gasket in Sandy's car.  Although it's the exact same straight six that was in our old SUV, and I had done this operation before a few years ago, Youtube was invaluable !

It took me a good four hours.  I'm sure that if I did this regularly, I could do it in half the time but it's still fiddly.  Bolts are very hard to access at the firewall end of the engine.  You know for certain that the engine goes into the car already assembled but it's quite an engineering challenge to design so that it's possible to remove the valve cover since so many maintenance items are underneath (coils, plugs, timing chain etc.).

The reason for the replacement is that we could smell oil -- not burning oil, but evaporating oil -- and that indicated that the seal wasn't as good as new.  In fact, when I finally got the cover off, much of the formerly soft rubber gasket broke into pieces.

The gasket itself is rectangular in shape and presses down into a groove in the cover.  It has lots of little extensions with holes to seal around the retaining bolts.  Secondary pieces go inside to seal each of the coils and then a package of 15 gromet-like seals are for the tops of the retaining bolts -- 11 around the outside and 4 up the middle of the cover.

It does require removal of the coils -- unlike "old" cars, there's a coil at the top of each spark plug, rather than one coil.  I probably should have thought about checking one of the plugs to see what they look like but with these new plugs / ignition systems, they seemingly last forever.

Making my life more difficult, I dropped three things.  Two 1/4" ratchet extensions dropped down, never to be found again.  They're sitting at the bottom of the engine somewhere or they're now on Osprey Road after a test drive.  When trying to get the last retaining bolt in place up against the firewall, it slipped out of my fingers and fell.  Oh No !  I had visions of driving to Barrie with the SUV to get a replacement ... but ... some time spent under the engine, removing the plastic underneath, and the part was found.  Whew.  Hindsight is always great -- those plastic panels need to be removed to do an oil change; I could have done that at the same time ... but I had another goal in mind. 

Back together again, the car started, producing a few service engine codes.  I used the reader to check them, cleared the codes (misfires) and they didn't come back driving to and from 522.  Who knows.  I'll take the car to Loring today to get the mail.  The oil smell seems to be gone but a little driving will tell the tale.  Also, if there has been any sweating through that vapor leak, residual smell might simply be hot dirty engine.

The first thing that I noticed when I took off the engine cover (another hard to reach fastener) was mouse nesting material tucked in among some wires etc.  I fished all that out.  Luckily there were no chewed wires.

That finding brings me back to a two-car scenario in our future, vs three car.  Leaving these things sit for half the year isn't good and it's more expensive than transport back and forth.

So, that was my major project.  Cassie was patient with me, spending most of the time lying on the garage floor waiting for "Dad" to do something interesting.

The other project, if you want to call it a project, was to burn the mountain of leaves and pine needles.  With the rain the day before, everything was wet but only the surface of the pile.  It burned slowly all day, filling the yard with pine smelling smoke and eliminating any mosquitoes for the day -- hey, what a great solution !

My indoor project was finishing up the blog from Devil Week.  I'd already written my personal blog but needed to do something for the club page, which I finished up and posted this a.m. 

Today ... don't know.  It's wet outside now, having gotten some light rain early this morning.  I had intended to do some weed whacking but that will depend on things drying out.  I could do level ground but not the slope.  Whatever I do will require a bug jacket. 

Jason, Lorraine and Kim arrived mid afternoon. I knew that they'd arrived because I heard Chili barking.  Cassie went crazy of course, but at least she's contained.  Shortly after they arrived, the lawn mower started; Lo taking advantage of the dry weather to do some catch up.  Had I been smart, I'd have been out there with the whacker but I'm not.  We got together for a short time in the gazebo, even though it was cool and windy.  They'll be here until Thursday, heading to a European cruise in two weeks, not returning until after the July 1st weekend.

Onward !