I thought I would fill everyone in on the process of resealing a valve cover on a 997.1. I have had a leak from the driver's side valve cover for the three years that I have owned the car and decided to finally fix the leak this winter along with a few other nagging problems.

With the 997, there is no way to remove the valve cover without first dropping the engine:



A closer look revealed that the oil leak was actually from the #2 cylinder spark plug tube:




If you look closely at the second picture, you will see that there is oil deep within the spark plug tube. There are actually two seals on the tube, one directly underneath the valve cover that only requires removal of the cover itself, and an o-ring below the lifter housing that requires removal of the cams and housing itself. My leak was stemming from the latter, which meant the cams had to come off. Digging in a bit deeper, I actually found that the o-ring on cylinder #2 was missing, I guess this explains my leak! It did not look as if things had been disassembled before, perhaps this was missed at the factory? Maybe some of the engine builders can comment?

Cams removed, cylinder #1 o-ring is in place, cylinder #3 o-ring is stuck to the bottom of the cam carrier, cylinder #2 o-ring is nowhere to be found!




New o-rings installed, starting to go back together!



Cams re-installed, mating surfaces cleaned up, new seals at the outer end of the spark plug tubes (green), and cam timing set.



Engine buttoned back up and ready to go back in the car.




And she's alive again!


Hopefully this helps some other poor soul that is thinking about fixing a valve cover leak. The good news, I replaced shifter cables, engine mounts, water pump, overflow tank, and spark plugs "while I was in there" without much trouble at all. There is a lot more room without the engine and transmission in the way!