My Brand New $500 Valve Covers

Brand New Valve Cover

Mom's car has been in the shop all week to fix a small oil leak. Three thousand dollars later it's back home, safe and sound. We thought the leak was coming from the valve cover. Turns out, while it was leaking from the valve cover, it was also leaking from the front main seal and the camshaft seals. Since we have to halfway take the engine apart to replace those seals, we might as well replace the water pump, all the belts and the idler pulleys. Wouldn't want to have to repeat all this work when the water pump fails a year down the road.  Plus new valve cover gaskets. After that was all done we find that the valve cover gaskets are still leaking, which means $500 for new valve covers. They're made of tin you see, so it wouldn't take much to warp one, which is probably what happened the last time I had this done. Last time I looked the car had 160,000 miles on it. Might be 200,000 by now. I try to take it in for oil change every spring and fall, but as usual I am a little late.

Oh, on a side note, they also did the brakes, pads and rotors all around. When I had this done on my car six months (or a year) ago, it cost like eleven hundred bucks.

Doing all that work under the hood is a giant pain in the ass. It's all about dexterity and having a vast array of special tools like '2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor Main Seal Installer' that Snap-On will sell you $500. Oh, and also the ability to absorb a whole late of hatred for the people who designed this car. Hopefully, the paycheck will relieve some of that anger.

It was expensive, but it was all basic maintenance. I think this only needs to be done every 100,000 miles or so. Overhead cam engines that use chain drive instead of belt drive, don't have this problem, but look out for engines that don't drive the water pump off the fan belt. Some companies use other methods, and they generally prove to be a big pain if the pump ever fails. How long should a water pump last? I wouldn't be surprised if they were lasting 100,000 miles, maybe even 200,000 miles.