| | | quote | Originally posted by tesmith66:
Do you have any details on the oil fill you added to the front cam cover?
Looks great! Hope to get mine looking that good.
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Ah, the cam covers. This is the second set I built. The first was a pair of 1992 rear covers. I have no idea how, but water was getting past the plug wire seal and rusted out two of the front plugs (this was before the car ever made it out of the garage!). I had welded a billet aluminum (EBay) oil filler on and already had it powder coated. Bummer. I knew a lot of people had this leaking problem, so I decided to go another way.
The 1996-1997 LQ1 motors had different cam covers. The major change was to the plug wire holes. They have a vertical "dam" around the hole and uses a different plug wire that has an umbrella molded in. This fits over the "dam" and keeps the water out. The bonus is these wires are flexible all the way down to the plug; it's not a rigid plastic contraption like the earlier style. It's a tight squeeze, but they just bent enough to be pulled out of the cover without lowering the motor.
On this set I used the oil fill off the stock front cover; cut it out with a saber saw and turned it down on a lathe. After welding it on I blended it in with Epoxy-Steel. So far that's the only thing I've found that will stand up to the heat of powder coating.
I wanted to use the stock plastic cam sprocket covers, but when you use a rear cam cover on the front there are no mounting points to use. I cut the end off an original front cover and grafted it to the new cover.
Hope that helps.
[This message has been edited by sspeedstreet (edited 01-02-2011).]
