Its now time to address the oil leak on my 2.8 b5. Im going to purchase the gasket kit that includes valve cover, cam seals, and tensioner gaskets. Local shops asking over a thousand dollars to do the job. Im debating wether I try and do the work my self. I have not found a complete DIY write up yet and would need a good one in order to even think about doing it. Im fairly mechanical so If there is a good write up out there someone please direct me to it.
I would get the kit that Blauparts sells and rent the tools from them. For those who have done this job themselves how would you rate it in terms of difficulty and how long would it take a first timer? The valve cover gaskets are obviously easy to do, its the other seals im worried about since the cams need to be pulled and what not. Thanks

 

get the cam chain tenioner locking tool aswell then get the torque specs and the rest is just dissasembly and reassembly

 

This job is definitely doable as a DIY, and I would give it a 5/10 for difficulty, and a 4/10 on the PITA scale.

Before you do this job, however, I would do the "Crankcase Breather system" job first, which is probably the reason that you have an oil leak in the first place. If your CCB system is all plugged up with gunk like mine was, there's still going to be nowhere for the oil vapor to go. So if you do the valve cover gasket and cam chain tensioner job first, you're just asking for another oil leak soon.

The Blaupart kit is excellent, and the instructions are mediocre. Their instructions would be much more helpful if they were in color so you could see things more clearly.

The more parts you can remove to give you access to the engine, the easier this will be for you. Make sure to loosen up the dipstick, or you will find that removing the passenger side valve cover gasket will be much more difficult. I also recommend loosening the fuel injector rails and moving them out of the way, so that access to the passenger side cam chain tensioner gaskets will be easier.

The trickiest part of this whole job is removing the cam chain tensioner gasket and valley seal from the passenger side. This is because it's in the rear of the engine. The driver's side is in front, and is much easier.

When attaching the special compression tool to induce slack into the cam chain, don't be afraid to tighten the tool so that you have enough room to get a pick in there to grab the gasket and the half-moon seal. But TURN THE TOOL SLOWLY!! If you start cranking on it for all your worth, you may break it. Just make sure that it is correctly aligned on the cam, and you'll be fine.



I'm afraid there's not a good DIY for the 2.8L engine, but I was able to get the general idea by looking at this DIY, and by looking at all the 1.8L DIY's out there on google.

One thing you don't have to worry about is setting the engine at TDC, like it says to do in the DIY above. This is not necessary.

If you go slow and are careful, this won't be hard. It is time consuming, though. I'd give yourself the better part of a weekend to get it done.

Good luck!

 

I couldn't imagine doing the tensioner gasket without first removing the cams and tensioner itself.

 

It can be done but it sucks lol - definitely remove the CCT first. Also, as jdahlen said, you don't have to index the engine at TDC on cylinder 3, but it may make things easier because the cam marks inside the head give you a good visual reference. Finally, one thing I learned is that once the cams are reinstalled, manually rotate the engine until the cam marks are once again realigned, and recount your links. If they're still 16 links apart, you're good to reassemble.

 

Thanks all, wish me luck. Im hoping my car's mid life crisis will soon be over, ive devoted the better part of this summer to tinkering with repairs. If anyone can think of anything else that is a no brainer to replace while im taking things apart to do this job let me know. I had the timing belt and water pump done recently as well as the breather system but if anything else comes to mind let me know. Thanks

 

There is a black cam cap at the back of each head, they could be leaking... Also may as well change the valve cover gasket and spark plugs.

 

I have 5 cam seals that came with my FCP timing belt kit I'd be willing to give up if you're interested.