[carbon02]

Robby-

Thanks for the thoughts on the liquid filled holes. That's one of those things that I would never have thought of. I would think the bolt would displace the oil, but I can see where it just compresses. It's also lubricating the bolts. This amount of lubrication can make overtight over torque happen.

Valve covers and plastic, what a combination.. It's almost like they should have put screwdriver slots in the bolt vs. the E-Torx, because that's essentially all it seems to take..

 

[joe0121]

I'll be replacing mine again this weekend and videoing the process including heli coiling the bolt holes. Robby you make a great point and I will document it in my video.

 

[XtremeRevolution]

If I may throw out a caution regarding stripping.

The #1 reason a bolt strips the threads out of aluminum, beyond overtorque, is a caused hydrolock.

In the case of any bolt that is screwed into a hole that has any accumulated oil in it.......the oil gets trapped as the bolt screws down....as you torque it, you are trying to compress a liquid and you end up tearing the threads out of the hole.

Always clear the holes with brake clean and compressed air......do it twice to be sure and look down each little hole with a strong light.....you want to see the bottom of hole looking back at you.

Rob

I'll update the main post with that information this week.

 

[JWishnok]

Bought new gasket today... Cruze started misfiring the other day so didn't really want to drive it much and assumed it was my spark plugs again. Popped the hood today to find this.

 

[Robby]

Bought new gasket today... Cruze started misfiring the other day so didn't really want to drive it much and assumed it was my spark plugs again. Popped the hood today to find this.

I see a exaust manifold and a lot of 'mung'.

Stand back a bit and reshoot so we can see the entire front of the head area.

Rob

 

[NickD]

Bought new gasket today... Cruze started misfiring the other day so didn't really want to drive it much and assumed it was my spark plugs again. Popped the hood today to find this.

You must be opening your hood rather infrequently, just yesterday had to go to another town 50 miles away, opened the hood for a quick check, takes about ten seconds to check all the fluids and obvious leaks.

Also give my hood latch a shot of lubrication spray, if you don't, may find you can't even open your hood.

 

[smader12]

Thank you for the write up, very helpful as mine failed at about 78k miles and 62 months -- two months past warrenty.

Notes from my experience today:

I over-torqued 2 of the bolts that came with my new cover and the bolts broke in half. Luckily for me it was easy to remove the broken part of the bolts from the engine. After that I just hand tightened all the bolts only. I used bolts from the old cover in place of the broken ones.

The tabs that detach the plastic bar on the left side of the engine (when facing the engine from the front) need to be pushed away from the engine (push from right to left left when facing the engine from the front.)

As the OP stated, the coil pack doesn't have to be detached from the wire, you can just lay it out of the way.

Thank you again for taking the time to so thourouly document these steps.

 

[fyrftr422]

Thanks for such an in-depth writeup. My Cruze hit 228,000 kms (142,500 miles) and now has oil leaking from the valve cover, but has yet to throw a code. Time for a replacement and it didn't look all that tough and seeing this write up, definitely worthy of doing in my garage. Thanks!

 

[tribaker]

my 2014 just threw the code @ 70K. Looks like the price of part has gone up $79 on amazon now.

taking into dealer if i can get a loaner car.

 

[XtremeRevolution]

my 2014 just threw the code @ 70K. Looks like the price of part has gone up $79 on amazon now.

taking into dealer if i can get a loaner car.

I only put up the Amazon link for convenience, you can usually find it cheaper if you hunt around a bit, and that price goes up and down all the time.

 

[tribaker]

car is at the dealership. service guy says that pcv cover is not covered by 5/100000 powertrain.

any truth to that?

i see others on here have gotten it covered.

its a smaller dealership that didn't have loaner cars.

 

[XtremeRevolution]

car is at the dealership. service guy says that pcv cover is not covered by 5/100000 powertrain.

any truth to that?

i see others on here have gotten it covered.

its a smaller dealership that didn't have loaner cars.

It is covered under powertrain. Ask them to show you in the warranty manual where it says it isn't covered.

 

[tribaker]

dealership covered it under warranty.

 

[uncle cracker]

I have a bolt stripped on my daughters car and it is 100 miles away. What size of heli coil do I need to take with me? Thanks in advance.

 

[Butt_Dragger0903]

I also need to know what size heli coil is needed.

 

[gt_cristian]

In addition, I like to replace known defective parts ahead of time as preventive maintenance.

Hi Andrei!

Very good article! Thank you for all this information!

I was searching for a post where I could find the known defective parts for the Cruze and the millage at which we should expect them to fail. I understand this depends on a number of factors of course.

So far, I hit 50K miles and I have to change the ACDelco 214-2317 Canister Purge Valve.
I will add the PCV Valve Cover and Valve Cover Check on my list of potential issues (from your other articles).

Thank you,
Cristian

 

[1988gmc355]

Can I continue to drive the car safely until I get the parts in next week?

 

[XtremeRevolution]

Can I continue to drive the car safely until I get the parts in next week?

Engine will run like garbage, you'll burn oil, and you'll potentially make an oily mess of your engine bay. If your wife is in labor and you have to rush her to the hospital, go ahead and drive it, but if you have other options and don't mind using them, I'd leave the Cruze parked until fixed.

 

[1988gmc355]

So, after a closer look at the pics of the new and old design on the original post my car has the new valve cover already and it has failed again, yet the check valve in the intake manifold is intact. So weird and now that I recall the guy at O'Reilly said the old code on the car was the same P0171 that trigged now. Hmmm

 

[XtremeRevolution]

So, after a closer look at the pics of the new and old design on the original post my car has the new valve cover already and it has failed again, yet the check valve in the intake manifold is intact. So weird and now that I recall the guy at O'Reilly said the old code on the car was the same P0171 that trigged now. Hmmm

How many miles between failures?