After 13 years of smelling oil cooking off on the exhaust I hope to funally cure my truck of this nasty habit.
The 2.8 wasn't happy unless it was leaking something somewhere. Shortly after I got the valve covers finally beat straight and sealed it started blowing the dipstick out and hosing down the exhaust manifold with oil. So I swap in a 302 with these swanky $20 Craigslist special Edebrock "Signature Series" chrome valve covers. The PS has made a mess ever since, the thing was tweaked enough that the regular 1/2 valve cover bolts wouldn't even start. From day one it required 5/8" long bolts which are kinda hard to sneak up on, and even then my normal tightening wasn't enough to get it to make any kind of a mark on a cork vc gasket at the back of the PS which is where the leak is. I just figured thats the way it is with the 1/2 vs 5/8 bolts. I tried two sets of fancy gaskets and after hearing cork can swell up and help seal trouble valve covers I tried them and it couldn't get it done.
So I settle on getting a nice set of aluminum valve covers. They are either straight or broke, pass/fail. I like.
But wait, the saga doesn't end there.
I find a set of retro class "Cal-Custom" valve covers on Summit for only 70 bucks. I order them and then go back to oodle over them and notice they are not baffled.
I get them in and get to looking them over:
They have these neat fancy grommets for a baffle type thing. I think it would make adding oil painfully slow.
And then I see this, well how is that going to work? Both covers are like this.
So I go over to my living room display 289 to test fit, with a normal hex bolt they drug hard on the side of the dimples. An ARP boltface is about the same as the hex head but has a smaller hex so a socket would have still worked... if the bolt would even start. The pattern was right, all the holes lined up just the whole thing was cast wrong. I could have ground the dimples hoping I had enough meat to play with... combined with the unbaffled design I decided I wanted out.
I found a set on ebay that look identical but are baffled, the pics have the holes in the same location.
So I return them with a note about the screwed up holes. I later read on my receipt I was supposed to call in about warrenty returns. Summit was gracious enough to give me full credit without dinging me for return freight.
After a bunch of hemming and hawing I decide on a different set.
I love the clean almost regal look of Ford Racing's packaging. So simple but somehow really classy.
Made in USA to boot.
The sides have a nice mirror polish.
They actually got the dimples to line up with the holes, even with room for a bolt head.
The fins are rather roughly machined, where they machined around the lettering isn't really really pretty with a few extra burrs but nothing really glaringly bad.
The included oil cap has the Ford Racing logo printed on it, I wish it was rotated 90* so it would be level with the world installed. I hope that the nipple is the same size as my Edebrock nipple too.
Nice big baffle, kinda roughly cast on the inside but nobody will see it anyway. Kind of odd they have a second boss for a PCV/oil fill hole on the other end of the valve cover.
I see a "Made in C" cast into the upper side, I get a flashlight and it is "Made in CA USA". Them dirty rascals.
Also got longer bolts to go with them.
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