About to have a head gasket job done and as I was looking things over I noticed this:


If I'm not mistaken its the valve cover gasket, but as far as I know I'm not having any symptoms. It is possible that when I overheated the engine recently (hot but no light/shutdown) this could have caused the slip?

 

Looks like your headgaskets may have been done once before at least. And the valve cover gasket looks like either sloppy installation or over-torqued valve cover bolts that may have pushed it out. In any case if there are no localized oil leaks I wouldn't be concerned about it. No harm, no foul. And I doubt that any recent overheating caused it.

 

Ok that makes sense.

The head gaskets had been done recently and then I hadn't been monitoring temp on a day trip and a day or two later in about 20 degree weather my temp spiked on the dash. I stopped driving it immediately But the next day when I started it there was the dreaded white smoke and a failed combustion test. Sloppy head gasket job too? I'm just hoping its not a bad block at this point.

 

someone over tighten the gasket, i bet if you were to remove it that the little torque ring is missing from the gasket.