Orginally posted by HeikDiesel at nwp4life.com
"Have oil leaking down the passenger side front of the engine block? It's more than likely your exhaust cam seal. This is known to be a culprit for a lot of leaks and a lot of aftermarket companies make replacements that utilize o-rings for a more effective seal. This is pretty simple and easy so save yourself a few bucks and do it yourself.
First pop your hood and this is what you should see. See how the front of my block is all nasty and covered in oil. We are going to fix that!
Next remove all spark plug wires and the nuts circled in blue. They are a 10mm head. After the nuts are removed there will still be a washer stuck to the valve cover. Use a screwdriver or needle nose pliers to pull them off. You don't need to keep track of the order of the wires. The length is pretty self explanatory on install. Torque specs for the valve cover nuts are 7.2lb/ft in numeric sequence
Next remove the breather line from the valve cover. You might need needle nose pliers to remove a clamp that holds this line onto some valve covers
Now the valve cover is ready to come off, just wiggle it a little bit and it should pop right off. Then you should see this. Remove the bolts circled in blue to remove the oil rail
After the oil rail is off, simply remove the very last cam cap. If you are looking at the engine is on the exhaust side on your left hand side. Remove the two bolts that hold it. You don't need to remove the stud. After the bolts are out, pry with a flat screwdriver against the head VERY LIGHTLY where the red arrow is to separate the cap from dowels in the head. It doesn't take much so be gentle. Torque specs for bolts 1-10 is 20lb/ft and 11-14 are 7.2 lb/ft
Underneath it is the cam seal. My car happens to have a golden eagle aftermarket seal and as you can see the o-rings have seen better days. I took it to a local carquest autoparts store and found replacements. I'd suggest an aftermarket one if you are going to tear into it this far. They are much better than the OEM ones in this case
Install is just the opposite of removal. Install the cam seal, put the cam cap and the two bolts back in. Torque those two bolts. Install the oil rail and bolts. Torque those bolts. Clean off the mating surface of the cylinder head and Honda suggests to use a new valve cover gasket but as long as the seal is soft I usually reuse them. Never had any issues. Honda also suggests to apply HondaBond to the four corners of the head shown in this pic to help against leaks.
Install the washers and nuts for the valve cover. The longer studded nuts go in the middle for your spark plug cover. Install your breather line and you are done. Remember to ALWAYS torque internal bolts. You might get away with hand tightening some bolts but I've seen tons of these bolts snapped so take the extra time and torque them. If you guys want any other tech articles just let me know I'll do my best to do some for you. Thanks
-Kris
Copyright 2008 IpbRacing Productions"
