Hey guys,

My car is boosted B16head/B18block with SC61 turbo pushing 400whp. Well I had 2 bungs welded onto the back of my valve cover in order to vent it, and then had it powdercoated red (see pic below). At first it worked great and only had minor leakage in the corners of the vc. But over time it started to leak all over the place and now it must be replaced. We cannot figure out why it is leaking and can only assume that it became warped from the powdercoating, or from when the bungs were welded on, or just from engine temps under the hood..?

I also spoke with the owner of Suja1 Motoring in the Chicago area and he said that he had the same leakage problem with his vc after it was powdercoated. So he got a new vc and just painted it and hasn't had any problems since.

What do you guys think? Anybody have this issue?

Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

well it is possible and aluminum doesn't show heat transfer as well as steal does but you said it's leaking all over the place, if you welded the bungs in back, transferred enough heat to warp the vc, i would think it would leak from the back. aluminum does move more with heat but underhood temps would not do that. plus there is many flanges and 90* angles to keep the vc from bowing up.

did you try gasket seal with a new vc gasket ?

ppg paint holds up good also on a vc, my sig has a thread

 

i would look more at crank case ventilation blowing the seals out than a warped valved cover

 

agreed. VC gaskets are pretty thick & forgiving. Not sure you would see a diff even if it was warped (unless to some crazy extreme)

 

wow. ac, ps, b series, and turbod...impressive

 

I think you should replace the all the long bolts and torque them down more with a little loctight, thats the four corners of the v.c and the four going through the spark plug cover maybe with a new v.c gasket and see if that helps.

 

After further analysis...the welds on the bungs may be the cause of the leak. The guy who did the welds did a sloppy job and there are a couple teeny tiny holes that may be the cause of the leak. But we really cannot tell because the oil is all over the place.

Thank you for your input!