LordVicious

I have a very wet driver's side valve cover. I'm not sure (yet) if it's the cover or a spark plug tube that is leaking. My question is should I go ahead and replace the plug tubes (which means redoing the valve covers) on BOTH sides or just the side that is leaking?

LV

pecto3

Just remove the aluminum sheet cover for the ignition coil, you'll be able to see if the periphery of the spark plug tube/s is weeping. Hopefully its just the tubes. Just replaced my leaky tubes recently with new o-rings as well. Took me a while to figure out how to remove the tubes but eventually figure out an easy way to remove it. I looked for a big flat head screw driver then aim the the screw driver on the inner distal part of the tube and just simply pry it out. There was some gash on the tube from the screw driver but tube was intact with the both o rings still attached to the tube. Took me a out 5 to 10 secs to pry it out after the first one

LordVicious

Thanks Pecto3! So you DON'T need to pull the covers to replace the tubes then?

LV

pecto3

No

Dharn55

Do yourself a big favor and do not use a screw driver to remove the plugs. If you do and crack the tube and a chip comes off in the engine you will be pulling off the cam covers to retrieve the piece(s) of plastic, and to to this you will need a cam hold down tool, etc.

Go to a marine store ( like West Marine) and get a t-handle drain plug which will expand into the tube and let you pull it out without breaking it.

fpb111

Get a 1" boat plug less chance of damaged bits getting loose in the cam area.

http://www.pedrosgarage.com/Site_3/C...%26_Tubes.html

aviography

OP,

What year is your 996? I *think* the 996.2 (3.6L engines) had its spark plug tubes changed so they are metal and can only be changed after significant disassembly, so if your car is the Mk 1 3.4L version then you can (fairly) easily change out the plastic spark plug tubes. I changed mine out and no longer have the passenger side leakage when I bought the car.

As for you folks who used the marine draing plug to extract the tubes, I don't know how you guys do it because I was only able to extract one tube before the boat drain plug became damaged enough that it no longer works.....

So I came up with my own contraption which cost me $2.00 inlcuding tax from Home Depot, basically a cast iron threaded plug and 3/8 fine pitch hex-head bolt threaded until it bottoms out to the unthreaded section.

I HAND thread the cast iron plug into the spark plug tube for 4 of the 6 cylinders, with reasonable caution you only need to engage the slightly tapered tube by about one thread, or less, and it will grab enough to allow you pulling the tube out without the risk of cracking the tube or leave debries behind, the small hex bolt allows me to turn the whole tool with a small wrench for the two cylinders where the bolts from the muffler bracket get in the way, I then pull on the small hex bolt with a ViseGrip, see pix below:

LordVicious

Thanks guys. Mines a '99. Do you guys think I should do all 6 tubes or just the one that is leaking? 'Cus now I'm scared.

LV

aviography

I would certainly suggest doing all 6, if one (or more) is leaking, how soon will the other ones start to leak as well? The parts aren't expensive, I bought the tubes, O-rings, and plugs for about $100, it will take you quite some time to get to the point of changing the tubes, so it makes sense to me to do all 6 while you are already there.

You could also change out the coil packs as well at the same time for the same reason/rationale above, however I decided to reuse the original coil packs as there were no signs of mis-fire or error codes, plus the coil packs cost a fair bit more than the rest of the parts.

relinuca

FWIW, as one was leaking, I had the dealer replace all 6 tubes icw the 60K major service for my '99. Allocated cost for tubes+labor (before PCA discount) = $245. Now garage floor is dry as a bone.

relinuca