5.7L Valve Cover Gasket Change Process w/ Photos

Man, they were so in my way. I used really long zip ties and held them out of the way with the zip ties. It worked rather well.

 

good idea, didn’t think about that. Thanks for the reply.

 

Just wanted to add to this post, OP can feel free to move the pictures to his if he wants in an edit. The passenger side was by far the most difficult side and the video didnt have anything on really how to navigate removing and reinstalling the passenger side valve cover. Which by yourself would have been incredibly difficult with the coolant lines in the way. I didn't think there was any real way to move these safely with straps until @SilverSurfer suggested he had used zip ties. Again I though maybe there were enough stable locations to perfectly retract these lines out of the way in the vehicle, nothing is that easy.....right??? Man I was wrong.

Starting back to front:

Back left Bracket that the large black wire loom attaches to with some hard lines behind it. If you haven't already removed this wire loom, do it now, it gives you more room to work anyway in the back with the valve cover bolts. I had to use 3 zip ties daisy chained here to reach the lower bend in the coolant line. I did this zip tie last.


Here you can see where the Zip tie reached down to. This pipe moves A LOT when pulled away and up from the engine, like you were pulling it to the passenger side mirror for example. It moved far more than trying to do it with one hand and doing the valve cover shuffle with the other. I was able to give myself 4+ inches of clearance over where it was resting normally.


Smaller 10mm bracket location, directly to the left there is a sturdy bracket holding a connector, I zip tied to this location to give clearance in the front half of the engine. Zip tie can safely avoid with the wires or the connectors here, all zip tie pressure is 100% on the bracket.


Lastly but I did not get a picture, at the very front corner of the engine where the coolant lines run there is one final 10mm bolt the lines bolt to the engine. I removed that, It can give you about an ~inch of wiggle room and play when you zip tie.

The wire harness is a pain, unhook all harness mounts from the rear of the engine attatched to the block, and the front should have plenty of wiggle room from removing the dipstick bolt. I also unhooked the MAF connector and the other connector right by it, (2 large connectors) and the 2 plastic retainers that loom uses that attach to the brackets in the front, one is on the hard coolant lines (this may be unnecessary but it was already done).

Finally I zip tied that hole loom to the coolant lines and tried to get as many of the dangling pieces as possible contained. This should allow you plenty of room to use two hands to get the valve cover in.



You will have to pull and pry the coolant lines a little bit especially in the rear and watch the wire looms that run along the intake at the top, that is where mine got hung up a little bit, but they're easy moved to the side once the valve cover is 90% in. I found the best way to get the cover back in was to aim the rear of the valve cover downward (like youre pointing it at the passenger door speaker) clearing the back spark plug tube and that rearmost coolant line bracket will be your biggest pain point. Once you get that in, the front coolant line bracket (10mm bolt where you did the Zip tie) and a wire loom post mount at the top rear of the valve cover will tag team you for clearance issues. Just be aware of both of those locations and you can get it in the rest of the way. Its not that anything is special is needed there, they can both just get hung up at the same time causing problems. Move the large wire loom over the mounting post and then tackle the bottom bracket interference.

Overall the job really wasnt that hard, tedious....absolutely. But overall not bad. Saving the ~$600 in labor was totally worth it.

 

Does anyone bave a PN or link to the fel pro kit with both spark plug gasket and outside gasket? The one by fel pro, VS 50742 R doesn't have the grommets. Fel pro listed ES 72133 for the grommet set but says it only fits the 4.7L.

 

Forgot to tag OP

 

Sh!t man! I wished I saw this thread and your post. I thought the passenger side was the easiest to do since it looked like it had more room, but hell, those coolant lines were the devil. I threw in the towel fighting the coolant lines to get the valve cover to clear and slapped it back together to tackle it on another day. It took an hour to unbolt everything and then another hour trying to figure out that I missed one of the rear valve cover bolts and the other few hours thinking how in the hell are people removing the cover without unhooking the coolant lines.

 

I just bought this Fel-Pro kit, VS50742R, from the female warrior store that shall not be named for $13.55, and it DID include the washers, grommets, etc.

 

Thanks to all for the great info here. It helped a lot in the my process. I would like to add a few things I found helped with the back bolts of the passenger side valve cover.

I removed all of the air intake housing.
Remove the three bolts holding the electrical junction box beside the firewall. Spray wd40 from below to help with the rust so not to snap off the head as I did.
You can then unplug the wire harness from the firewall connection and this electrical junction box. This will allow you to move the box to the side and the harness.
Be forewarned you will need to clear the faults you will get from disconnecting this wire plug.
You will be able to move the wire harness out of the way to get at the back bulbs.
I also removed the heating hoses back to the firewall.

I ordered magnetic sockets to kelp with not loosing the bolts I removed and was reinstalling.

This will give you plenty of room to remove the back bolts.

 

I had to look back at what I did..... I drained my radiator and removed the rubber hose portions of those lines. The last owner had used the green stuff in the radiator anyway, so I will flush the system and go back with Toyota Red anti-freeze.

 

This is the wire junction box where I started to remove the harness and plugs from it. Once the plugs are removed the harness can be moved out of the way. I already unscrewed the “J” box and started to remove the wire loom which comes up the side of the box

 

Thanks from me as well. I just finished mine this morning.

 

Just did the passenger side on mine after I found a massive leak on the upper rear corner, turns out the tech who installed it pinched off a giant section of gasket inside the cover. Thanks a ton for this writeup!

If I had to do it again, I think I would spend the time to drain enough coolant to remove the metal coolant pipes and disconnect the wiring harness where it goes down beside the dipstick. It would make the rest of the job a cakewalk. A friend also recommended using Permatex High Tack Spray-A-Gasket as glue to hold it in place. It's also oil/temp safe but tacks up and stays flexible quickly.

 

I'm doing this job currently myself.
Did anyone else notice that the video referenced and the OP installed the tube seals upside down?

The description on the video and the comments also confirm this (he says the video shows them upside but he flipped them and didn't video it)

Did anyone else do this and have problems? I caught it before I installed them but now I'm thinking about waiting for confirmation. Here is another video I referenced that shows them opposite of this thread:
https://youtu.be/1ZlI20ccqx4

 

This was done perfectly, nicely done. Did you happen to change the OIL CONTROL VALVE FILTER while you had the cylinder head off? I have attached a few pics to show you the part I am talking about. I am planning on changing this filter, and will be using your write up to do so.