To those of you who have done this yourself, how hard of a job is this (scale of 1-10, hardest being 10)? The OP defines it as easy but it seems pretty intimidating. I'm sure I've done worse so I guess I need some courage before taking it on. Shop is quoting me $1,700 to repalce the valve cover along with 6 new coil packs. Seems high to me but I'm guess most of it is labor on the valve cover.

 

you can buy one of these Gs for that much used lol Take your time and it shouldn't be bad at all. Read my post above from a few years back. FSM has everything you need to get this done.

 

Take your time with it and don’t worry if it takes you all weekend at a leisurely pace. Maybe do an intake plenum spacer and really deep clean the plenum parts while you are at it.

it did save me a few bucks but if I did it again on another car I would not do the Maxima covers mod again. I would repair my old ones or just buy new 350z or G covers and gaskets.

 

I’m wrapping this job up right now and it’s definitely more of a pain in the *** than everyone lets on. There is no way anyone is getting this done in an hour and a half. AllData supposedly quotes 3 hours which sounds plausible if it goes well. I was expecting 4-6 hours with spark plugs, torquing to factory specs and cleaning everything up with TB cleaner, and it’s definitely gone beyond that. At the end of the day though it’s just nuts bolts and hoses, it’s not particularly technically demanding, but there is a physical component of pushing and pulling 15 year old wiring and hoses around the engine bay and having your hands get shredded aligning the cover bolts. It’s not a fun job, I’d give it about a 6.5 out of 10. Harder than your average valve cover gasket.

Four things I ended up doing that I wish I did a lot earlier to save some time:
1) just disconnect the throttle body from the coolant hoses and ECU. It’s a way bigger pain in the *** with the upper plenum in the way. Nissan datascan can supposedly do the idle learn procedure and I have a copy, so I regret not doing this sooner. I’m doing that tonight and I’ll confirm it works.
2) disconnect the drivers side of the engine harness terminations, like the cam position sensor and the locking junction connector, because you can then pull that entire pigtail out of the way to drop the drivers side cover in and get more slack for the passenger side.
3) Glue the new gasket into the cover grooves with RTV ahead of time. It’s constantly falling out because you can’t just plop it on, you have to glide the whole cover into place because of the wiring and it’s always getting stuck on something.
4) Remove the intake timing solenoids. You need all the space you can get. Get new aluminum gaskets up front.
If you leave a whole weekend to do the job you’ll be fine. It’s not hard, it’s just very annoying.

 

Well Nissan datascan does work to do the idle learn, just follow the manual there’s some specific steps. Also definitely have the solenoid gaskets, I didn’t and one of them is pissing oil all over the place

 

How to tell ahead of time if I need to replace the valve covers too? Pull spark plugs and inspect first? Or just replace them anyway since there are now cheapish after market sets? Or just have them on hand and return if unneeded?

 

Either or. I wasn’t doing this job twice so I got cheap aftermarket ones and followed the suggestion of putting some permatex grey on the top of the tubes. I got felpro outer gaskets at the suggestion of someone on here as well... the ones with the crappy covers seemed fine, but I opened the felpro and they were much tackier and more pliable. Good suggestion for not a ton of money.

 

how did the cheap covers hold up? I see terrible reviews on them but wondering if it was the gasket that was cheap

 

haven't really dug in and done a full post-mortem, but the front of the cover around the edges stopped leaking. haven't pulled the coils to see if there's anything in the tubes. last time it was on a lift there was some oil seepage down the back of the engine, but i have no idea how long it's been there, but it must not be too bad because the oil level hasn't seemed low the times i had the oil changed.