Hi all,

Lately I had noticed a small oil leak at the p-side, back corner of my engine. Just where the head and block bolt together. I cleaned it of completely and kept an eye on it. After driving a while, bingo, we've got oil!

So, keeping in mind that I had the dealer replace the valve-cover gasket about a month ago (together with replacing the steering rack), I feared a kaputt head gasket!

I went to the dealer today to get a second opinion. One of the older techs looked at the car, cleaned of a bit of oil, and then mumbled :'Damn those rubber gaskets'. He then continued to replace the rubber valve cover gasket with a cork one. You can imagine my relief (and my wallet's).

Turns out that Volvo stopped supplying cork gaskets a while ago, the young tech that replaced our gasket the first time thus used a rubber one. The older tech had to get a cork one from a third party manufacturer (well actually he had them in his tool trolley).

So when in doubt, doubt the rubber gaskets ;-)

DbVdb
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'92 Volvo 240GL 6cyl. Diesel