So I was cleaning my valve cover, spraying water into the PCV hole and what not when I saw chunks of black come out. When I picked one up, it felt like, well felt, like gasket felt. So I started looking and it looks like there is a gasket inside the valve cover underneath that metal bridge that hides the PCV ports.

So... Mine (gasket) is coming apart, maybe? How big a deal is this? Is it replaceable or do I just need to buy a whole new valve cover?
Any insight here would be appreciated. Thanks

 

Hey I just cleaned mine out and put a new gasket on it. The metal bridge, as I learned, is called the baffle. See my other recent post in this same forum, where there's a photo of it.

Easy replacement. My gasket came in one of those multi-pack deals you see on ebay (at first, I didn't know what it was for). I'm glad I took the baffle off and cleaned it....first time in over 200k miles. I had tons of schmutz behind the baffle what I took it off to clean the PCV port, but then, my head gasket had blown, so I had brown foam everywhere.

I'd guess one important reason to even have a gasket there would be to reduce vibration noise between the baffle and the rest of the cover. I was even considering removing the baffle on my truck, but figured it must function to keep stray oil from plugging the PCV.

 

Thanks for the reply, corvoid. I looked at your thread and the pic. It looks like your baffle has bolts. It sounds like your head is an earlier model off a carb system? My baffle isn't attaced with bolts, but with rivets. Breaking the rivets and reattaching baffle with screws is beyond my skill set. Not sure what to do but leave it for now.

 

That baffle is actually called a flame arrestor. It has two functions. One is to dissipate any ignited vapors that may occur under the valve cover so that they don't travel through the PCV or breather hose to the intake and back up to the fuel source. If that were to happen, a fire could likely occur. The other function is to prevent oil from sloshing up into the PCV and breather hose. I'm not quite sure why Toyota thought is was a good idea to start using rivets instead of bolts, especially since there is a gasket there that would likely need to be replaced at some point. My only thought would be that perhaps somewhere along the line, one of those bolts came loose under the valve cover and wreaked havoc on the valvetrain so that was their fix.

It really wouldn't be difficult to replace those rivets with bolts. Drill them out and use some self tapping bolts to reattach the flame arrestor. If you go that way, don't bother with getting a new gasket. I have found that the replacement gaskets are far to big for what is needed which is likely why there are chunks falling into your head. It's not essential for it to be perfectly sealed like most gaskets so I just use some RTV to seal it up.

Also, you want to get those chucks of gaskets out of your valvetrain. Things like that can cause major failure if they were to get stuck on a rocker or the cam.