How to Replace Valve Cover Gasket 1998-2012 Ford Crown Victoria

Okay, friends. We have our valve cover kit for our 2005 Ford Crown Vic. We've got everything we need. It comes with gaskets and the grommets. Let's get started.

Okay. So we made our way under the hood. We are gonna remove this right here so we can get the engine cover off. We're just gonna use a quarter-inch drive. Lift that. Put this cover right out of the way. At this point, you're gonna be able to see all this area around here and all this crud. We wanna make sure we get it out of the way before we start removing anything. You can either blow all these out or of course you can vacuum it. They're gonna come right down along here, just take a peek, and just double check to make sure that there's no debris coming along here.

Once you're sure it looks great, because you don't want anything getting inside the engine, we're gonna continue on by removing anything that's in the way of the valve cover coming straight up. I'll start getting these electrical connectors taken apart. And I'm just gonna go down along the fuel injectors and anything that's connected to this cable so I can kinda get it out of the way. You've got fuel injectors. You've got your engine coils for your ignition. Just disconnect all that.

That's pretty much all the electrical that I can see at this point. So I'm just gonna make sure that I can lift it up off the valve cover. There's these little clippies that hold it on. Okay. Once this is nice and free, like it feels, we're gonna move along to here.

So, I'll show you the far end. It has a little clippie, dude, that you can grab on to. You just push that and then you can draw it off. I'm gonna do it with the valve cover though. I'll disconnect this. Use your eight millimeter and start removing this bolt. Once you're sure you have all your bolts out, grab your rubber mallet and give the cover a bonk. Let's use our seven millimeter to get this off of here.

At this point, grab on to it, just draw it straight up and out. I'm gonna grab that boot now. And now, we're gonna do the same down the line. Try grabbing this cover, just see if we can try to work it out of here, watch out for any wiring, of course. There we are friends.

So, now we have a clear view of our valve cover and the gasket. Let's get the gasket off of here so we can clean this down. It's nice and hard. You wanna make sure that you save all of these. Yup, hard as a rock. Wow.

Okay. So, now it's time to get this over to the parts washer and make sure it's degunkified. Let's get this stuff all cleaned up. Make sure you give that valve cover a good scrub. So now that we have the valve cover cleaned and it's drying, we're gonna continue on by getting these rubbers off of here, because we're gonna replace those. These, we're gonna clean down. Do the same to all of them.

So, now it's time to clean up the engine portion. It's important to remember, if you come along the front side of the engine here, you're gonna find a whole bunch of this RTV gasket. The reason for that is because - if I can clean this out of the way, I'll show you - you can see that there's like a line right here, like a crack, that's because this part of the engine is actually separate than the main part. This is where the timing chain and everything is.

So what you need to do is make sure you clean this up as good as possible. Get off all that cruddy RTV. We're gonna clean up the whole area where the valve cover is gonna ride. And then, once it's ready for an install, you need to make sure you take a little bit of RTV, go right along here, and then, of course, on the lower end over there.

A couple of things you can use for when you're cleaning this up. You could use a razor blade, a scraper, or maybe even a little piece of very fine grit sandpaper, if you had to. A couple things that I would not use is something like this. The last thing you want to do is cause any damage on your engine.

Okay. So now that we've got this all nice and cleaned up and it looks really great, just take a quick peek down inside here and make sure nothing large fell inside. You know, you're moving the wiring around, maybe a little piece of tape fell in there. You wanna make sure there's nothing in there. This looks pretty great.

Back at the bench, we've got our nice clean valve cover here, everything is super dry. I let it dry overnight, and that's just the color of the plastic at this point. It's not dirty. I clean this as well because I wanna make sure it's in great condition. If it wasn't, I would replace it. But to continue, I wanna make sure that there's no moisture inside this, obviously, there's a sensor there.

Now, let's talk about the shape of the valve cover. You'll notice that one of the valve covers, the one on the passenger's side, is gonna have these bumps that come out. So, when you look at the gaskets, you would just find one that matches. I'm just gonna start this in here and you want to press it along as you go, making sure that you get it into each one of these holes, okay? I'd like to start on one end and then work my way up, going right inside the groove, all the way down.

Make sure you get it inside all these and it's definitely not gonna come out. It doesn't hurt to just go around one more time, just to make sure it's completely set in. Okay. That looks great. Let's move along to these. You wanna take these little rubber grommets and put them to the little flippie, it's facing up, and the flat end, up against the flat end on the grommet. Slides right on. Put them in pile. Do the same to all.

Now that we're back at the car, let's get back under here. Just be careful when you remove your cover, you don't want anything to fall into that engine. Now, you want to double check all of the mating areas on the engine where the valve cover is gonna ride. Just take another peek down inside here to make sure you don't see anything large inside the engine. Maybe you scraped off a little bit of RTV or something.

Now, take a little bit of this RTV and just go right around those spots on that engine where the timing cover meets up. You don't need too much. So, now it's time to install the valve cover. And you carefully slide it, paying attention to all of our wires as we go.

There we go. Let's grab these. We're gonna start installing them, all right, like that. And just grab your bolts and go right through. It's gonna be time to snug these up now. It's important to remember, as you snug these up, you want to start from the center, and work your way towards the ends. And the way we're gonna do that is in a crisscross pattern. I don't need this very tight because I'm gonna torque it down to manufacturer's specifications when I'm done.

Let's torque this to 89-inch pounds. Obviously, I can't get the torque wrench in there. There's number 11. Awesome. If you felt the need or the want, you could just go back around and do the same exact sequence again. If when you're removing your coils, you notice for some reason your boot came off and you're a little worried about how it goes back on because of the angle, just look for the flat area and line it up with the flat area on the coil, then you're ready for an install.

Let's install the coils. Let's snug it up and do the same down the line. Grab your wiring harness, slide it up and over this. It's looking pretty great. You've got this right here, that's an anchor point, it's gonna go on to that stud. So, let's get everything so it's flowing. We get those anchor points put on. There's another one, down at the back of this. Nice. And that just kinda leads you to lining everything up at this point.

Let's start connecting in the electrical. Get this up here. Okay. We'll come right down the line. All this little gray connectors, do them all at once so you can remember. There's number one, that's the fuel injector. And then do the next fuel injector, give it a tug, all the way down the line. It's the last one on this side. If it doesn't click in, just give it a little extra push, and another tug. Nice. Okay. Let's do the same line, except this time, for the coils. Count them if you need to...one and so on.

Moving along, we've got this connector, goes right here. Beautiful. This is still connected, we did not remove that. So that's great. Just double check this harness, feel around for any wires that may not be connected. Okay? Grab these, put it right back on here. Perfect. I'm gonna come down here. This needs to be anchored, you don't wanna leave anything floating around. You've got this connector right here, goes right up on there. Okay. Let's find our oil cover, oil cap. This looks great. Let's move along to the other side of the vehicle.

Let's move along to the other side of vehicle. To start doing the driver's side valve cover, you're gonna need to start getting things out of the way. After you've blown everything free, and you know that there isn't any debris on top of the engine, we're gonna go ahead and remove this. So, to start, I'm gonna grab this. There's a little tab on the back side that you can't see. I'm just gonna grab with my index, and then draw this off. Perfect.

Next, we're gonna come up here and we're gonna remove this with an eight millimeter, and then follow the hose and do the same down here. Grab the hose, give it a little wiggle. So, let's start getting this electrical out of the way. These little anchors here, they usually get frozen right on there. Just hit it with a little bit of penetrant.

So, next, what we're gonna do is we're gonna start disconnecting things that are gonna be in our way because we wanna be able to move this and be able to get the valve cover out. We can follow this right along, disconnect the alternator.

You're gonna come right along here, you can see this. Grab that little green tab and just slide it. Feels like it's stuck. Hit it with a little bit of penetrant. It's pretty good now. Let's get this air filter cover out of the way. Gives us a little bit more room.

So we wanna make sure we have a clear view of all of our bolts because we're gonna start removing them. As you remove them, you start from one side and you work your way. Don't start from the center. If you do that, you risk damaging your valve covers. Just one last one down here. I'm gonna get that with the smaller ratchet. Pay attention to how much gap you have between here and the break booster. Last thing you want is your ratchet getting stuck.

If you feel like you wanna get your harness even further out of the way, just go ahead and disconnect these far forward connectors. And you get plenty of room to move these. Now that all those are out, let's go ahead and grab our valve cover. If it doesn't seem like it moves, you can give it a light bonk with a rubber mallet. Get these coils out of the way.

So now that the bolts out, this can move around. I'm just gonna take my screw driver and then I'm gonna put a little bit of penetrant down in that hole. A little wiggle, let it work it's way down. When you pull up on the coil, it might come separate from the boot. Don't worry too much about that. I'll show you why.

At this point, I'm gonna carefully grab this with some long-nose pliers. Twist it around several times and then draw it up. And get it to break free. Wow. That's really frozen on there. If your boot is stuck on here like this and it just doesn't want to come out, more than likely, it's gonna get damaged, in which case, you'd have to replace it.

Take a peek. If it doesn't look like it's torn, it looks like you're all right. Do the same down the line. Let's get this out of here. It's good practice to make sure you try to keep these in order. It will be helpful down the line. Now, we're just gonna come right down here along the bottom of the booster. You're gonna see a little clip that's holding this wiring. Just pop it out of there so you have more slack. Let's get this clip off the back of this bracket because we're gonna remove it.

You're gonna have a 15 millimeter headed bolt there, and then if you follow the bracket down to the engine, you'll have another 15 millimeter down there. If you look along the backside of the intake, you're gonna see this right here. We need to get this off, we're gonna take off this torque's bit, and then there's gonna be another one, down lower. So, now I'm gonna use my T20 bit to remove this. Grab this, carefully just draw it off the back of this.

Feel along the back of the bracket, you're gonna feel a stud. Go ahead and take that up. Let's get this right out of the way. Now, I can see that stud back there. I'm gonna use my 15. Just grab that bracket. See if it wants to come up. Let's get the...it's out of way. I'm just gonna roll this up and slide it out.

Now that the valve cover's off, let's go ahead and get it all cleaned up. While the valve cover is still drying, let's start cleaning up the engine. This area over here.

All right. So now that we've gotten the majority of the gunk off of the mating surface where the gasket is gonna ride, we need to continue on. And a couple of spots that we want to pay special attention to on this side of the vehicle will be this spot right here. And if you lift this, that spot right there. And that's right where the timing chain cover is gonna be up against. So we need to make sure that that's super clean with no oil in it.

I have a clean rag. Get this all cleaned up. Okay. This gasket up on here. Just double check, make sure everything's pressed down, let's get over to the vehicle. Grab some of that RTV, put it right on most points. Perfect.

So next what we're gonna do is we're gonna put the valve cover on here. But before we do, take a nice hard look inside there and make sure that nothing fell inside that engine before we put the cover on. Just want to be careful for this wiring harness here. That's gonna want push back behind this valve cover as we go, pay special attention to that gasket on your valve cover to make sure you're not catching on anything.

I'm gonna grab this wiring harness, I'm gonna bring it right outside of the break booster area there. If, for some reason, when you're installing this, and if you feel as though your gasket's gotten caught on anything, and it might have been peeled over and maybe come out of where it's supposed to be, just stop. Take it back out. And take a peek. Last thing is you want is to be all done and have a big oil leak.

Let's get this. Where's my harness? Is it here? [Inaudible 00:17:45.858] that.

So what I'm doing now is weld the valve covers in or pretty close to in. I'm just feeling to make sure that covered gaskets still on. If it isn't, you can generally just peek and get it back on. Start all of these bolts in here.

We're gonna torque this down to 89-inch pounds. Let's get our coil back in here. If you're gonna be reusing your ignition coils, it's a great idea to replace those boots. Make sure it's nice and snug. Do the same down the line. Get this bracket back on here. This is gonna go towards the front. And then, of course, this is that bolt that came from your rear.

As you can tell, it's a little bit hard to get up and over this. So you'll just have to kinda wiggle things around and figure out what works best for you. Grab your big long bolt, right straight down through there. We're not gonna snug that up until we start in that other bolt as well.

When you look at this, you're gonna see that it has the flat end of the nutted side, that flat part is what's gonna go up against the engine. This part just sticks out. Okay. It's nice and tight back there. Let's do the top one.

This bolt right here, I'm just gonna bottom it out and then we're gonna torque it down. Torque this to 18-foot pounds. Get the anchor point on here. And we're gonna bring this around. This one on here, we should push right on, give it a tug. That feels good. Grab this one. Click that on there. Perfect.

Got a round plug here. Just wanna find my round plug in there, clip that in, clip those in. So, in here, the coils, right? The temp goes into your fuel injectors, push them on, give them a little tug, lock to the coil.

Make sure you don't have any lose hanging wires. Make sure you get the clip for this wiring harness, press it back into that bracket. Just make sure we get this back on. It should line up nice. Then go ahead and get your bolt in there. Once you have that one in, do to the top. Now that they're both started, we'll bottom them both out.

Let's get this cover back on here. So, now is the time to get this hose back on here. But I wanted to show you something real quick. Take a peak in there. That's kinda neat. It's about this length and what it does is it kind of just sends the air going through in a tubular motion and spins it right in and helps it go down into that intake. I'm gonna take a blow gun and I'm just gonna blow right through here, just to make sure there's nothing in there. Let's get this hose back on here now.

You wanna line this up with that right there. And now we're gonna snug this up. You can use a flathead, but generally speaking, I like to use an eight millimeter to make sure they're nice and snug. If you over tighten them and they go click, click, click, that means that they're no good, and you have to replace them. You want to make sure that you have a good connection here.

Let's get this little hose back on here. This part goes on the valve cover. And then this part right here. You can do one at a time, bolt at the same time. Click, click, that feels good. Double check, no extra wires laying around. Awesome.

If you look at the bottom of your engine cover, you're gonna see this area right here and here. Those go right down along this. You're gonna slide them in and then this hole is gonna go right over that nub.

Okay, friends. So we've got that job done. One thing that you want to remember is anytime that you're doing something with the engine like this, where you have it wide open, I'd like to do an oil change. You're engine is gonna thank you for it.