The valve cover:
Because I’m going to turbocharge my B16a this summer I needed to modify my valve cover. To make sure the positive crankcase ventilation system would work well I had to add 2 AN weld-on fittings on my valve cover. The original red Type-R valve cover I use is in very good condition, so I decided to buy an old/used OEM B16a1 valve cover.
At first I removed the text from the valve cover with a portable grinding machine. When the text was removed completely I started grinding by hand to remove the biggest bumps on the upper part of the valve cover. Next thing to do was removing the OEM coating from the valve cover. I used Histor paint remover, which worked very well.
To remove the coating from the valve cover definitely, I used a pressure washer to get the paint remover and the OEM coating off. Now the coating was off, I drilled 2 holes in the valve cover for the AN weld-on aluminium fittings. I made these holes on purpose in the front side of the valve cover, because of the internal baffled zone inside the front of the valve cover. The internal baffled zone will prevent the oil to splash directly into the fittings and disappear to the catch-can. By constructing the weld-on fittings this way, only the positive crankcase pressure will be vented by the catch-can.
After the AN fittings were welded on to the valve cover, I started grinding again. This is a lot of work when doing this by hand, using sandpaper. I also decided to make the welds of the fittings look smooth, which took a lot of time. After all it took me more than 13 hours grinding to get to the result I wanted.
