Warning: Post contains blood!
So while in the area of Ringwood, i decided to pop into the MX5 Factory just to see if by any chance they would have a PCV valve and a grommet, if not otherwise would go to the closest Mazda dealer. So spoke to Dick Richey and said i was the first to ask for one at the factory..
Unfortunately they didn't have one, but he quickly rang his buddy that worked at a Mazda dealer if they had any in stock, he said he did a search and were none in stock at all. So he ordered one for me, which arrived the very next day. Getting home to take out the PCV valve was a breeze, but the grommet, not so much.
My guess was that the grommet hadn't been changed for a long long time, and it had hardened basically to the point of being impossible to pull out. Probably spent a good hour try to wriggle it out, using a flathead, which caused the edges to begin to rip, and still nothing. So i decided to take the valve cover off as a last resort and just push the grommet through to the back of the housing, and unscrewed the cover, and slipped it out that way.
The casing of which i pulled out the grommet
Reminder of the leak before
The two bolts behind the cover were on pretty tight, and while undoing them, slipped and scraped. Instant reaction "MUM! WHERE'S YOUR PHONE??!"
I was having second thoughts about painting my valve cover due to perhaps not being able to clearly identify whether or not there would be any oil leaks in the future, but since the cover was off, i thought why not. This is where being a first timer, took its toll, and the problems began to roll. So advice to any new comers who might be reading this is, research the project completely before doing anything. I got too cocky and found this out the hard way. I degreased, sanded, and applied two coats before i found out that people who had reused their old valve cover gaskets had had some sort of leak. So i degreased the back with an old toothbrush and removed the old sealant. Having the cover on its back caused the paint to scratch, so when i finished cleaning it, did a couple more coats. I went and bought a brand new valve cover gasket from Bursons for about 30 something dollars and the silicone sealant for about $20.
Got home, removed old sealant from cylinder block, one solid piece fell, couldn't find it for about 2 hours, left it, felt disheartened, researched whether sealant in the cylinder block could damage anything, found nothing. Also, read that it's not a good idea to use a flathead to scrape the sealant off of the cylinder block as damaging the metal may cause leaks! Which was too late by the time i had done it.
As i gave up trying to find the bugger, i topped up the sealant in the 6 spots allocated found on miata.net, chucked the valve cover back on, couldn't for the life of me put the back two 12mm screws in, finally did it, put the first 10mm screw in hand tightened, torqued, put second bolt in, torqued, *pop sound* *silence* *gut wrenching feeling* (no pun intended) *oh no*. I SNAPPED A F*CKING BOLT. Take the two bolts out, including the back two bolts, rocker cover off, bolt was snapped with only about 2 threads popping out of the hole. Just enough for me to get some pliers and start twisting it out. Why didn't the first one snap? Anyway, turns out i torqued it to about 45 FOOT-pounds instead of INCH pounds. Facepalm. Learn from my mistakes, and i'll never confuse them ever again.
So i've left it all for tomorrow, where i'll buy a 1/4 torque and hopefully find some screws.
So basically today was just a day of things to go wrong!
On a lighter note, here are some pictures of the progress.
Pretty uneven job, but it'll do. Make sure to paint vertically with the cover as these streaks may appear due to uneven distance of spray.
Probably my fav photo
This little fella was watching (more like laughing at) me the whole day. Please stop shitting on the deck
I'm glad i can vent here. Cheers lads!
Brandon
