How screwed am I??

[e30Andym42]

Sunday I put some silicone on a small gap between the head, upper timing case, and valve cover.

Today I had to pull the upper timing case.  In the process some hardened excess silicone from the other day dropped down the timing case all the way down into the lower case.  The piece was about an inch long and about as wide as half the width of the valve cover-head mating surface. 

Am I going to have to tear down the engine to remove the piece or will I be okay to run it for a bit and hope it ends up in the oil pan where I can drain it out....?

[SkidMark]

I wouldnt worrie about it too much.. It should work its way into the oil pan. Its just silicone, nice and soft..  Much better than a bolt!!!  It may have gotten hung up on the lower timing gear and will get ground to bits by the timing chain? Check your oil filter for particals next oil change, but it might just get stuck to the oil pickup screen. Good luck!!! ......Skid

[DesktopDave]

No biggie. I pull silicone out of oil pickups all the time, never seems to do any damage. I'd recommend the OEM rubber gaskets though - when they're new they work very well indeed. That silicone RTV never seems to work out for very long.

[e30Andym42]

Good to know.
 
 And I have used all new gaskets in my rebuild. There seems to have been some sort of design flaw with the upper timing case piece. It sticks a bit above the plane of the head, so it causes a gap in the valve cover seal. There also seems to be a very poor seal between the upper and lower timing cases. I'm gonna bash on it a bit when I reinstall it to hopefully get the case cover to sit better. But the stock stuff isn't cutting it due to these issues

[mabeer]

If you're talking about the difference in height illustrated in this picture then it is not a design flaw but rather purposeful in order to compress the profile gasket.  The old crusty profile gasket won't compress so you may want to replace that if you haven't already.  When I tore mine apart it was not seated properly either.  My theory is when the profile gasket recall was done early in its life the techs didn't take the time to do it correctly which lead to valve cover sealing problems.

[colin86325]

Also if you machine the cylinder head you're supposed to machine the cover by the same amount.

[e30Andym42]

The cylinder head has not been machined. Yes, my issue was my lack of installing that cover correctly as I now see. With the turbo, taking the valve cover off is an enormous process, so I'm gonna throw some silicone in there just to be safe.
 
 Oh, and there never was a recall for the profile gasket. I've never heard of significant issues with this profile gasket either, but I can't say I've looked for it. The flawed profile gasket was due to poor material and was between the head and block.
 
 Thank you all for the input. It's greatly appreciated

[mabeer]

You're correct, the "notorious" profile gasket is between timing case and head. The upper timing cover profile gasket,  is what needs to be compressed as in the illustration.  My point was i don't think that was done when they replaced my profile gasket in 1991.  Just wondering out loud if that lead to a bunch of leaky valve covers.  Sorry to add to the confusion.  As usual my thought process was as scrambled as my writing would make it seem.