Sealing Stamped Small Block Valve Covers – Grrr
So I should hammer down the bolt mounting surface closer to the rails?
NO!!
Think about it.
If you hammer down the bolt areas you just made a torque limiter........ in the wrong place. With the old style impregnated-cork gaskets the idea was to tighten down the cover until that space contacted the cork, then a little more preload. This compressed the soft cork the right amount to seal properly.
This also holds true for the silicon gaskets and the other non-torque-limited types.
But not for gaskets with torque limiters and those ignorant hard black I-don't know-they're-made-of, ones. On those I pile a little RTV around the bolt holes on the cover to take up the space,and then no RTV on the bolts; it makes clean up a little easier on subsequent inspections. I try desperately not to use those hard black ones.
OK, you could pound the bolt areas down for the torque-limited gaskets, if you really wanted to, but not on company time,lol.
