Seal between valley cover and Dist. bolt?

[orwin]

More on my 430 "refresh" --- After taking off the distributor, I see that one of the many places the valley cover was leaking is around the stud for the distibutor hold-down clamp. Should there be some sort of grommet or seal there? I found nothing in the engine gasket set that looked promising. The parts books and shop manual were not helpful either.

Anyone with a 430 shed some light on this?

See link for pic:

http://s312.photobucket.com/albums/ll327/orwin_bucket/?action=view&current=valleycover.jpg

John
430 Tbird HT
registry #1590

[bcomo]

I just rebuilt my 430, and there was no rubber grommet for that stud in my kit either.

Here's what I did, and it worked fine --

Just find a piece of rubber tubing, like wiper tubing, that fits very snug on that stud. Then use a razor blade to cut a 3/32 slice of that tubing. Put some black RTV at the base of the stud, and slide the tubing down on the stud to the base. Wipe the excess, and let it dry overnight. Worked for me, and no leak.

[tbird430]

That was good thinking Bart!!

I just used black RTV silicon, and let is set overnight before installing dist & hold down clamp. I figured the silicon would act as a large "clump" of rubber anyways, and the dist. hold down clamp really doesn't put alot of pressure down onto it either. You just need to keep oil from coming out and dirt/water from going in....