Turbo Valve Cover Gaskets

[911 SLANT]

Going to install Turbo valve covers this weekend and want to know what gaskets to use. I have a pair of new rubber and paper.

[prschmn]

Paper works fine with flat dry surfaces. In my opinion the silicone ones are best if you
aren't meeting both those conditions.

[DRACO A5OG]

If you go silicon, chose the lower torque value in the manufacturer's instructions, the higher setting will over squeeze the gasket and may cause leaks.

The trick to either use is to go over the nuts several passes to insure there all tight in the end. DO NOT go over torque specs.

[Henry Schmidt]

Wrightwood Racing makes a very cool gasket set that has high quality paper uppers and paper lowers with a silicone bead around the bolt holes and sealing surfaces.




http://www.supertecperformance.com/porsche-parts-sales.phtml?sl=16&s=1&srchfld=&srchqry=valve+cover

[911 SLANT]

Is there any gasket sealer used on either the paper or silicone? Henry looks like you prefer the paper gaskets.

[911 SLANT]

Henry I do have the one with the silicone bead. If I use these. Do I need gasket sealer?

[prschmn]

Those are my favorites too but do NOT use any sealer.

[KTL]

Originally Posted by prschmn

Paper works fine with flat dry surfaces. In my opinion the silicone ones are best if you
aren't meeting both those conditions.

Mark makes a very good point there and I bolded + underlined it for emphasis. Why? Because folks would be quite surprised how NOT flat most camshaft housings are. These parts of the engine seem to be rather dimensionally unstable. Because you can put a cam housing on a truly flat surface and run it across some wet sanding paper and it takes quite a bit of hand work to true up all four gasketing surfaces- cam thrust plate location, intake + exhaust valve covers and liquid gasket surface for the heads. I think it's money well spent having a machine shop surface the cam housings when you're into a thorough service on the engine.

In fact the cam thrust plates themselves can stand to be surfaced too. Those locations on the timing chain side of each cam housing are usually quite uneven and that makes a notoriously pesky gasket even harder to seal well.