I did my head gasket job about 3000 miles ago and the truck has been running great. I was running it without the pcv oil separators in the rocker covers mainly because I never got around to it. Well I installed my new ones today, went for a drive and the valley gasket blew out like a balloon and started dumping oil. Any advice would be helpful as I really don't want to replace it and have it happen again.

Thanks

 

You should be able to blow through the oil separator. I thought there was only one oil separator ? On the RH valve cover where the hose goes to the RH side of the plenum. If there are supposed to be two of them then I must be missing one. On the LH side valve cover, I believe my hose just goes into the throttle body.

 

Yes, there is only one on the right(passenger) side valve cover. The other breather going to the throttle body is suppose have nothing in it. If you put one in both sides, thats prob what caused it.

Not a recommended way to go, but after the oil seperator cloged a couple times a year, I ditched them,pluged the ports on the intake, and went with breather filters. Universal ones are cheap and work great

 

Looks like that is what happened then, for some reason the parts supplier sent me two so I figured one in each tube. Thanks for the advice, didn't want to redo the gasket and have it blow again...

 

the RH one gets a separator and the LH gets nothing. The RH has vacuum pulling, and the LH is open to provide air so the top of the motor isn't at full vacuum.
Tha way you had it, it should have sucked the valley pan gasket in and caused it to leak. If it blew out like a balloon, you may have another problem...

 

It looks like the front of the gasket ballooned out. Can't tell for sure until I tear it down though. The only thing that I did was add the two separators so I think that has to be the problem. The only concern I have is should I remove them both completely or leave the one on the passenger side.

 

I would leave the one on the passenger side. If you don't you could pull too much vacuum and start sucking oil into the plenum. My 96 had about a quart swirling around the trumpets without the separator....

 

Sounds like a plan thanks for the advice.