Re: 16V questions: valve cover gasket, oil pressure, etc.

["Ian Overholt" <ioverholt@hotmail.com>]

I just replaced my valve cover gasket a couple of months ago.  It wasn't 
hard, but there is a lot of stuff that has to be removed.
     1 electrical connector on throttle body
     4 ground wires attached to a stud on the back of the intake
     Upper portion of intake manifold (replace this gasket)
     Throttle cable
     Intake boot
     Spark plug wires
     Upper half of timing belt cover

The most important thing to remember is that when you are tightening the 
valve cover bolts, DO NOT OVERTORQUE.  The two bolts that are in the center 
of the valve cover are prone to stripping.

I removed the supports on the back of the intake manifold completely, but I 
think if they were removed from the bottom only the manifold would still be 
able to be removed.  I thought that I could unscrew just the top of the 
brackets since those bolts were easier to get, but there wasn't enough slack 
in the manifold to clear the brackets.

>** The valve cover gasket leaks oil into one of the spark plugs. Granted,
>I have to remove the intake manifold to get to the gasket, it still looks
>like a very straightforward operation: remove nuts/bolts on front and rear
>side of manifold, disconnect tube that goes to the air filter, and
>manifold is off. Would somebody please tell me if I am horribly mistaken
>and it is not as simple? Then, I suppose I will simply have to remove the
>cover, and not mess with anything else, such as spark plugs, correct? Do I
>need any other pieces besides the valve cover gasket and the gasket
>between the upper and lower manifold?
>
>** Looking around the engine to locate the oil pressure sending unit, it
>seemed to me that it was on the driver side of the engine, and that it is
>completely different from the sending unit in 8V engines, with a
>wire-c-clip connector hooked to the unit. Was I indeed looking at the
>pressure sender or something else?
>

The alternator light usually comes on until the engine passes a certain RPM. 
  This is some safety feature that I don't understand, but it's normal.

>** In my 8V when I changed my alternator the alt. light in the dash did
>not go out when starting the engine until about 2000rpm. Then I looked
>again and saw that I had forgotten to connect the thin wire that comes
>from the positive terminal harness and goes to the alternator. Same thing
>happens in the 16V, so I thought: "ah! I know how to fix this!". I traced
>the same wire to the alternator, and it was not making good contact.
>Cleaned it, put it back on (actually, while in the 8V alt. the wire
>slid over a protruding flat contact, in the 16v alt. the wire terminates
>in an o-connector which screws on the alt., I don't know if that is the
>proper configuration, or if somebody messed with it), but the
>problem remains. Any ideas as to what other thing could be causing this?
>
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>Elias
>
>
HTH,
Ian Overholt
'88 16v
'78 Sidewinder

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