Valve Cover Bolts MY85
 

Under the hood from phone.

Per Mrmerlin's sggestion, I am checking the tightness of valve cover bolts while refreshing intake. 1) What is the best way/ tool to get to back bottom bolts on VC? 2) what is the torque spec? Btw, some of these bolts are loose. Thanks for the heads up mrmerlin. TIA.

just tighten them with 2 fingers, just past snug
use a cut down allen wrench

Thanks for the reply. These bolt heads are hex, not allen. Hmmm...

use a box end wrench

Done. Thanks!

Folks; My 86.5 (and probably 85 forward) use rubberized washers aplenty beneath the valve cover bolts. These no doubt cost a few bucks from Porsche, but I found them from Home Depot for pennies each. I believe that I also gave the part #s to Roger.

That is a very tricky thing since the bolts screw into the head of another bolt and often when you touch them you break the head off the lower bolt.....becomes a HUGE job trying to drill out the broken bolts....and more will break as you try to loosen them. Many of my customers who had a minor oil leak ended up having to have the engine PULLED just to drill out broken bolts. Porsche fixed this on the 87> camcovers with "special" bolts .....

Just snugged up the looser ones; not too much. Hopefully, it won't come back to bite me.

Only when you actually need to remove the cam covers..... which may be never.

Jim is right on that one. I ended up with four broken spacers. When I put it back together I used red lock tite on the drilled out spacers and anti seize on the bolt thread. Seems to have worked as i was able to remove the cover with no problem.

What happens is the spacer starts to come out and then stops. Why it can be loosened and then not come all the way out is beyond me.

Another solution is retrofitting the 86 change to the 85. (TSB below)
But requires cylinder head mod.
Podguy solution of loctite on the spacer studs is the way to go! Says so in TSB as well.

Picture of the original 85 arrangement is shown, for those not following.
Tiny threaded end of standoff / spacer stud tends to break in the head.
Sounds like Jim has heard-tale of many nightmare occurences.
Drilling out a steel M6 in an aluminum surrounding substrate, basically inside an engine, requires great access, prep and care.

Or, if the standoff winds-out with the bolt --- ok except if near the firewall, then there is a huge interference with the camshaft below --- can't get cover off, cam can be scratched.

86 change (fairly early 86) makes bolts one-piece.

The spacers have been NLA for years......

I was under the impression that after spacer studs were removed that S4 bolts will replace the 85-86 bolts. I have no idea of when Porschge changed this as i have seen both 85s and 86s with the S4 style bolts. Loc titing the spacer studs and using never sieze on the bolts seems to work.

I had to re-make two. Cleaved the remaining M6 threads and drilled/threaded the spacer body for a replacement piece of M6 thread derived from a bolt.

What is the "cylinder head mod" that is required?