Day Three - Removing the valve cover

As I'm doing this autopsy of my dead Miata, I keep forgetting that I'm going to be replacing the whole engine. As I disassemble the thing (mostly for my own curiosity) I have to realize that I'm not going to fix what I'm discovering. At least, I don't think I am. What if I find that the engine isn't all that bad? One can hope.

So today I wanted to remove the valve cover. I've done this before on my old Toyota truck ages ago, so it's not all that difficult. I started by removing the spark plug wires from the coil pack. Disconnected the cam position sensor (Now that I know what that thing was!) and pulled out the PCV valve and started to remove the bolts.

There are 11 bolts that hold the valve cover to the head and a few of them were not tight at all. The wrench didn't have any resistance. I could have removed them by hand. The rest were okay. The other two bolts I needed to remove are the one attached to the coil pack in the back. The one on the passenger side is a bitch to get to. I removed the supports on a metal pipe along the top side that was in the way. I think it's a fuel line, but I don't know. I'll look it up when I get there. Anyway, I just loosened it enough to be able to get to the bolt.

While moving some of the wiring harness around in the back, I noticed that some of them used to be tied back, but many of the plastic tie downs were broken so they were loosely hanging there. Doesn't seem to be much of a problem as the entire wire harness is pretty tight together.

I pulled off the valve cover and everything looks fairly normal as far as I can tell. I don't know the last time I ever replaced the valve over gasket. (Maybe never?) It didn't look too bad until I started messing with it and it started to break apart from brittleness. Well, if this ever makes it back to regular duty, a new gasket is in the cards.

I did find another problem when I pulled off the cover. The cam position sensor looked kind of exposed. Upon closer inspection I can see that part of it was broken off. Looking into the timing belt area, I saw the other half leaning against the timing belt. It must have just come off then. I can't imagine it still being where it was if the engine was running. Ugh! Oh! Remember, I'm replacing the engine. Hmmm, this may be one of those parts that isn't included. OK, possible new sensor to buy as well.

Inspecting the valves, I'm not totally sure what I'm looking for, but it doesn't seem too bad. There's a little bit of gunk around. I was sort of expecting all kinds of metal shavings or something, but I don't really see any of that here. I did notice that the spark plug hole, that had the massive amount of oil covering it, has the oil coming from deeper than the valve cover. I'm thinking the head gasket was the problem here.

Hmm, so is this a normal amount of gunk, or is it something I should worry about if I'm going to keep this head?

A look down the gnarly spark plug shaft.

Well, I think that's it for today. What I'm looking at tackling next would be to drain and remove the radiator and maybe remove the intake manifold.