Thread: HOW TO: Remove and Replace Valve Cover & Gasket (In Correct Order)

I thought the FSM said rtv blue in all circumstances?

It does and if your going to go through the trouble of following the FSM for torque sequence why not follow the whole thing.

You know what's interesting. THe FSM does mention RTV on the half moon areas. What I was wondering is if they also want RTV placed on the engine side of the gasket. I recently put on a new gasket on my JDM Swap. I didn't put RTV underneath it though. My reason for doing this. The previous gasket had no RTV below it. I'm assuming that the gasket that I took off was the one that the motor had on it when it left the factory.

If you use an OEM gasket... you don't need RTV.

Yes, in fact, you do, technically all the way around but my NX/Sentra FSM paper copy states just around the under portion of the distributor, but I will get that later, here's from the electronic version I have:


I'll get a photo of the paper copy later, but hey, better late than never.

Then can someone tell me that when I first changed and painted my VC myself there was no trace of RTV what so ever... And I know for a fact that the VC was never removed prior to that.

I just took mine off and there was rtv on the 4 spots mentioned in the fsm. I'm also pretty sure this valve cover has never been off before. How often do these gaskets leak? There was oil in the #1 and #2 spark plug wells. 130,8xx miles on this engine.

Sorry to dig out an old thread, but need a little help.
I'm having trouble removing the hoses. I've loosened the the ring clamps but the hose won't budge. Any ideas?

Thanks.

Wiggle them back and forth. Rotate while pulling. There are bulges that the ring clamp has to allow the rubber and clamp to pass over in order to remove on 90% of these connections.

Is it a B13 with tons of miles? And which hoses? They may be kind of 'melted' on. In which case you have 2 options: grab some vice grips and pull on them like all hell, while moving left to right left to right etc, or cut them off and replace with new ones.

BTW as for the original post, it doesnt matter what order you remove the valve cover bolts, the numbered order only matters when replacing it.