Rocker Cover Gaskets

 

Holy Crap!  Subaru calls this a "rocker cover".  They should call it a "guts cover".  To think about it, looking from the front, it's pretty obvious the cams are under there.  I am replacing the seals on this because there is oil weeping out in places and #6 had a fair amount of oil around the plug.  I'll replace the big outer seals and the inner gaskets that go around the spark plugs.  Note that all six gaskets are different. 

What is different for me is that the gaskets go in "longwise" rather than flat.  They're my next adventure on the motor.

There are sixteen or eighteen bolts that hold the covers on.  They have a rubber washer that gets hard with age and you get a lot of oil seepage.  It's not a bad idea to replace them all, though they're like $2.80 apiece.

 

tic...tic...tic...

 

This is where I left off the original go-round of my conversion documentation.  I wasn't as religious with my digital photography as I had wanted to be.  I do tend to get in a hurry.  That, and the pucker factor might make one forget to stop and snap pics.  I guess a big part of what's missing is installing the motor mounting brackets to the bottom of the engine.  Did find one pic of this.

When I test-fitted the right side bracket, I noticed that it was hitting the water pump.  The manufacturer had already ground away material to address this, but I had to remove a bit more to keep it from rubbing. 

 

It's also obvious that the original oil pan is still there.  I wanted to hold off on getting that done until the "big hits" on the Visa slacked off.  Doing it later was not a big deal, as the mounting brackets leave it accessable.  Of course after you're all done and it's drivable, you need a good time to take the van offline and get it done.  SmallCar did it for me on a quick turnaround basis.

 

Next:  Point of No Return...