Bad valve cover seal caused oil to drip into my timing belt compartment... so now it's all oily and gunky. Took the belts out and want to spray it down with degreaser. Is it safe to do this without harming anything?

Also covered up dipstick hole. Any advice would be great. For the time being, breaking out the paper towel and going at it...

F22A4 90 Honda Accord EX

Thx!

 

Anybody? Still going at it with the paper towels...

 

Are you sure that the valve cover gasket was the culprit? You may indeed actually have a cam seal that is leaking bad. If the car you are talking about is the one in your sig (since you did not mention what car this is happening to) then I would say considering the miles you have on it ... the cam seal is most likely the culprit.

If the belts you are speaking of are the timing and balancer belts ... then yes ... you can spray it out and wash it down without doing any harm.

You may want to change the belts while you are in there.

 

if you're going to be spraying anything - especially petroleum based in that area, make sure that afterwords you replace the belts......having a timing belt skip a tooth or anything of the sort - ouch. But also, get those cam seals checked out. if they are OEM there is actually a "redesign" of it I believe, and the crankseal as well.

- Nathan

 

It's not the seal... it's the valve cover gasket... the seals are fine. I even have a retainer on them too, but thanks for the worry and advice!

I just wanted to clean out that area cause it's so oily and it's so hard to wipe all the crooks and crannies down there.

My concern was if the degreaser would get into the sprockets and such...

 

we use brake cleaner to clean the area it gets rid of the oil pretty quick .... if you have oil on the timing belts then buy new ones oil makes the rubber swell and get soft and the chance of you having a timing belt failure is alot higher