What’s up guys! Welcome back to my channel after a way too long break. This week I’m starting the process of replacing the valve covers on my Nissan 350z. This is a difficult job that I’ve never done before, but luckily there’s tons of great videos out there showing the step-by-step process!
What’s up guys welcome back to my channel my name is dom and if you haven’t been here before i have a 2004 nissan 350z sitting behind me this week we are going to be replacing the valve covers this is a huge job these valve covers are made of plastic and tend to break over a period of time usually about a hundred thousand miles is when your z will need new valve
Covers or at least valve cover gaskets unfortunately mine did go out and i did find oil in three out of the six in my spark plug tubes that’s why we’re going to be replacing it this week now i’ve never done this before and i definitely don’t know what i’m doing so i’m going to make sure to link the videos that i use as an example in the description below so that
Way if you need to do this job you can follow along with them there’s tons of great videos on youtube showing step-by-step process of exactly how to do this job so instead of me just standing around here talking let’s look at the parts that i ordered from xeon motorsports for this job so you’re looking at about a thousand dollars worth of parts right here this
Is definitely overkill you do not need to order this many parts to do this job the only things you really need to order are the valve cover gaskets and then possibly the valve covers themselves i wanted to do some preventative maintenance so i decided to order a lot more stuff all of this stuff i ordered from z1 motorsports and i’ll make sure to leave a link
In the description below to z1 motorsports so that you can order these parts if you need them the valve covers themselves were 440 bucks and that also included the valve cover gaskets the spark plugs were 67.53 these are the one step colder just like i did last time with my other spark plug installation video i decided to just get brand new spark plugs because
I’m assuming my old ones already have oil on them i don’t want to risk it i’d rather just replace them i also ordered a new upper plenum gasket as well as a lower to middle plenum gasket the lower to middle plenum gasket was 20 dollars and then the upper was 31. another upgrade that i wanted to do was to replace my pcv hoses z1 motorsports had this whole pack of
Three for 48 dollars it was a lot cheaper than just buying the single one that i needed and the last thing that i got was this set of high ignition coil packs these were 350 on sale so that’s why i decided just to pick them up while i’m doing this job the other things you’ll need are going to be masking tape to mark all of your bolts plastic bags to separate them
All gasket maker which i got from walmart then an inch pound torque wrench that i got from amazon for about 45 bucks so i’m just gonna put the camera down and let it roll while i’m working on this i’ll probably cut out a lot of these parts but let’s go ahead and get started on this thank you foreign now that i’m at this point there are 18 10 millimeter
Bolts that you need to remove from the top of the plenum it’s super important that you remove it in the certain sequence it’s described in video that i’m linking below you can also find it in the hanes manual for the 350z i’m just going to mark each bolt with some tape and a sharpie to number them then i’m going to organize them into baggies and label the baggies
So i know which one goes where so we’re going to start with bolt 18 and work our way backwards all the way until the first bowl i’ll make sure to put up the diagram that shows the correct sequence of how you’re supposed to remove these bolts all right all right foreign ‘s off i also plug the coolant hoses just with a bumper attachment the next step
Is going to be removing the wiring harness and then also removing the middle to lower plenum along with the upper plenum gasket first we are going to take out these bolts that are holding in the wiring harness all the way around and then we’re going to work on these 10 millimeter bolts that are also done in a series just like the upper platinum foreign number
Six this is five this is four three two and one foreign okay so i just took off the lower plenum and that exposes these ports which i do want to cover with something i’m probably just going to cover it with a piece of cardboard and then i’m going to tape it down on there like that just so that nothing falls into it all right so the next step once you have
Everything off is to remove this part of the wiring harness just so that you can get the valve covers off on both sides a little bit easier so there is going to be a few clips that you’ll have to undo around each part which you’ll be able to see where they go because they feed directly into where they’re supposed to clip onto the main thing that is described in
The video is that there’s going to be a clip back here that’s attached to a sensor that’s going to be a little bit difficult to take off so i’m gonna go ahead and try to get that off i’m also going to get off the other one that’s a gray and green clip that’s back here once i do that then i’ll be able to loosen up this whole side of the wiring harness and get the
Valve covers out all right so i got the wiring harness removed it’s just sitting over here and that gives me so much more space underneath to get off the valve covers on this side i also got it loosened up enough on this side so it allows me a little bit more space but it is a little bit tighter on this side than it is on the right the right is obviously more
Wide open next is going to be removing the coil packs on each side and then finally removing the valve covers foreign foreign okay now that all of this is clean we’re gonna put some gasket maker on our valve cover gasket and in the corners of the head there just a little bit not too much then we’re gonna put some gasket maker around the corners on the
Inside just to hold it in place while we’re trying to put the valve cover back on foreign the first new valve cover is on and torqued down you will torque it down to 76 inch pounds of torque for all the bolts on this valve cover i just got this inch pound torque wrench from amazon it was about 40 bucks and it’s worked pretty well so far next up is removing
The other valve cover cleaning everything off and doing the exact same thing and then torquing everything to spec then we can put in the new spark plugs and the coil packs i’m going to take a break right now so i’m just going to put the new coil packs in this one just to plug the holes and i’ll come back a different day all right now that this side is done and
Looking good we are gonna move over to this monstrosity and try to get this valve cover off this might be a little difficult mostly because this bracket back here does not move very much so i’m definitely gonna have to try to finesse it out of here all right now i’m going to clean this off just like the other side we need to clean off all this gunk before we
Put on the new gasket then we can put the new valve cover on and then finally rebuild the whole thing all right now we finally have both valve covers on the new z1 coil packs are in they’re only in right now just to keep any dust or debris out from getting inside the valve i will take them out and put new spark plugs in here this is where i’m gonna stop today
I’m super happy with how far i’ve gotten with this project i can’t wait for the z to get back up and running and hopefully next week we will finish out this installation and get the z running again i’m sorry for not being able to post as much as i usually do every week this has taken a lot of time and i want to make sure i do it right and take my time that’s why
I’m also filming it for you guys so that you have some idea of what to do in case this is also happening for you hopefully after next week i will get back to my regular schedule we will get videos uploaded every single week especially since i’ll be able to drive this car i’m so hyped about it and i cannot wait make sure to come back next week for the final video
Of this installation where we get the z started and running again thank you guys so much for watching hopefully you like this video if you did make sure to give it a like comment down below if you’ve ever done this installation before and let me know how it worked out for you i’ll see you guys in the next one
Transcribed from video
Bringing My Nissan 350z Back to Life… Again! (Part 1) By Dominic Campbell
