so today i'm going up a hill and a ton of oil smoke starts coming out the back. i thought it was one of my pushrod tubes whos leak i've been fighting for a while now. stop after i get off the freeway- look under see a ton of oil just dripping off the heat exchanger. drive a little further and stop at a gas station after blowing a bunch of oil smoke. buy some oil- check again to see where leak is coming from- hmmmm valve cover doesnt look right.... hmmm- WTF the bailing wire is not holding it on! the bailing wire slipped off the valve cover somehow and is rotated to the bottom of it's arc. the valve cover is free floating and all that was holding it on was the silicon on the gasket at the top- just freely flowing oil out the bottom where it was loose! put the bailing wire back on and now just have to worry about all that oil slowly cooking off. any suggestions on removing the oil residue?

really wierd stuff.

You can bend the wire bale to make it tighter once you get the car up on stands. You will probably find the gasket has slipped and that caused the cover to come loose and then the wire bale slipped. There are several things to do to help prevent this, first make sure the gasket surface is flat and not rippled or warped and there is an article on the site here on welding tabs inside the stock valve cover that will really work well to keep the gasket in place. I use some dabs of sealer on the valve cover on our stock 1974 2l to hold the gasket in place before putting it on. As for the oil on the underside, about the only thing you can do is burn it off and suffer the shame of the smoke for a while til it goes away.

On the HE you could try engine degreaser or oven cleaner(cheaper). Let the

engine warm up a few minutes and turn it off, spray on cleaner let it sit for

45 min and spray off with as high a preasure washer or a hose with a nosel.

This will remove some of it.

i thought that perhaps the gasket had slipped- but it looked to be just as it was when i installed it. very odd- the bailing wire was very tight putting it back on, had to put quite a bit of effort into getting it to snap on. very perplexing. maybe someone doesnt like 914's and wanted to kill it when i stopped somewhere in folsom today...

Might have been because it was cocked, but when you let off the gas, especially going down a long grade, the engine makes so much vacuum that it can pull the gasket out from under the valve cover. Make sure your breather is all clean and glue the gaskets into the cover, like John suggested. Just glue on the valve cover side, it's easier to clean than the heads.

try using carb or brake cleaner.

use gloves that stuffs nasty and be careful the carb cleaner eats through gloves.

might take alot of cleaner but the chemicals mixed with the compression from the can take off oil and grease really well.

if you have an auto zone(not any flaps) near you get their generic sore brand brake or carb cleaner.
its higher pressure and works much much better(trust me ive used TONS of it).
much better than brakekleen or whatever its called.

home that helps
-jim