Why am I having trouble removing the passenger side valve cover?

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sprocket

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What's up with this damned D.A.??? Isn't the passenger side supposed to be easy? I can't get the cover past the inner fender. Is the engine leaning that way or something? This is irritating. I can't just put it back on either. I pulled the driver's side valve cover off my other Mark VIII without much trouble at all. I didn't pull the other side on that one though.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
You don't necessarily have a bad motor mount, it's possible, but not a guarantee. Remove the p/s motor mount through bolt, accessed below the a/c compressor. It's a 13mm bolt and pretty long. Pull it out then jack the motor up slightly with a 2x4 on the jack. Just a tiny but should do it. That's how I did it on my car.

Good luck!
 
I have heard that hitting it with a very large hammer in anger is one way to get it off.......
 
OK, thanks for the help guys. It will wait a few days now. I broke another vacuum line too. That makes three or maybe it's four. Fortunately we have plenty of plastic flex tubing here at work of various diameters. I grabbed 2 ft of everything awhile back.

I also disconnected one of the heater hoses because the valve cover pushes so hard against it. The hose was stuck pretty good. Hopefully it won't leak when I put it back on. Everything sure is brittle on this car.
 
P4130710.jpg


Custom VC removal tool from hell.
 
I replaced those rear heater hoses when I did valve cover gaskets for that reason. I figured that I sure as hell didn't want to have to remove the damn valve cover to replace them in the future. They're still available through rockauto.com, I think is where I found them. Funny, now that I think about it, I couldn't get the passenger side cover off of the '98, but the driver's side played as expected. The passenger side on the '97 was no problem, but the entire wiper assembly and brake booster AND hood had to come off of the driver's side. Crazy cars.
 
Hot*Mk8 said:
I replaced those rear heater hoses when I did valve cover gaskets for that reason. I figured that I sure as hell didn't want to have to remove the damn valve cover to replace them in the future. They're still available through rockauto.com, I think is where I found them. Funny, now that I think about it, I couldn't get the passenger side cover off of the '98, but the driver's side played as expected. The passenger side on the '97 was no problem, but the entire wiper assembly and brake booster AND hood had to come off of the driver's side. Crazy cars.
Click to expand...

I did the driver's side on my other Mark and I remember the back being somewhat difficult to get off, but I don't remember removing the hood, the wiper assembly or the brake booster. Maybe I removed the wiper assembly. I remember it being fairly uneventful and didn't take that long. I decided not to do the passenger side because there were no leaks there and it looked like clearance would be an issue. Do you suppose that engine is sagging towards the passenger side too? Maybe that's why the driver's side wasn't so bad.
 
Unbolt the motor mount... It's seriously easy, less than a minute to get it out. You'll be grateful once you see the clearance it gives you.

If you have a bad motor mount, you could brake torque the car in reverse with the hood open and see if the right hand side of the motor lifts.
 
DieselDan said:
Unbolt the motor mount... It's seriously easy, less than a minute to get it out. You'll be grateful once you see the clearance it gives you.

If you have a bad motor mount, you could brake torque the car in reverse with the hood open and see if the right hand side of the motor lifts.
Click to expand...

I'll do exactly that as soon as this freaking weather improves. Now they say it could be five more days. A few days ago the 10 day forecast showed 65 on the tenth day. Now it says 52. They're saying they likely wont be able to have the fishing opener up north in May because the lakes will still be frozen over. They're still ice fishing up north with 3ft thick ice!
 
I did have one freakout moment like that other thread. Here's the story:

I bought my other VIII off eBay for $700 and the guy delivered it. It had a bad engine. The body was in beautiful shape except for a cracked lip on the hood. The rear bumper was flawless.

So we got it down off the trailer and parked it on the street across from my house. At that point my friend and I hadn't decided whether to put it in his garage across the street or in my garage. He has all the tools and a big compressor. He decided he didn't want it tying up his garage because he works on other cars in there to make extra money. So we had to push it up my driveway and into my garage. Several guys couldn't push it up there, so he pushed it with his van. We put a blanket between the bumpers but his bumper got higher than the other bumper and the blanket fell out and he kept going. When the bumpers were sliding together it put a a few big scratches in mine.

I was pissed beyond belief. All we had to do was take just a little care and this could have been avoided. My beautiful car was now scratched up on day one. It was just a scratch but it looked like a huge wound to me.

I blew a nut. I was yelling, swearing and throwing stuff and saying that I was putting it right back up for sale because I didn't even want it now. Eventually I calmed down. Well, not really because I still

HATE THOSE ****ING SCRATCHES!!!
 
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