Originally Posted by
Mikey208
Update. I found the source of the leak. There are two smaller covers on each valve cover, the passenger side being the smallest. It appears this is where the leak is. I see a small puddle of oil sitting down just below it. The one on the drivers side doesn't appear to be leaking although I can't be 100% certain. Does anyone know what these cover and why they are there? I wonder why the gaskets would go bad like that with only 53,000 miles on the car. It doesn't look like a terrible job to replace the gaskets myself.
Those are the breather covers and they leak on most Crossfires due to the lousy sealant used at the factory. My Graphite never leaked but it was a daily driver - that seems to help.
There are no gaskets, they are sealed with "Ultra Black RTV", well, when WE seal them, they are. I did mine at around 32,000 miles and have 56,000 after five years, no oil leaking and my engine has stayed clean.
When you do the work, it is best to yank the entire valve/breather assemblies off and completely clean them after separating them. You then seal the breathers to the valve covers with RTV.
When putting them back on, use new valve cover gaskets and a new set of bolts. Needswings sells a kit for this very job.
Plan to do the fix the first time by just resealing the breathers to the valve covers. Then, six months later, do it again but do it MY way and fix it for good.
You can read the entire saga of how others have had to fix theirs more than once, like I did, and learn from it here at the link below - I think my story starts around post 232 or 250. I'd never tried a job like this before and actually enjoyed the process. It took me HOURS over two weekends, mostly to give parts time to dry between steps.
https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...over-leak.html