02 f 150 leaking oil

my 4.6 in my 02 f 150 decided to treat me with an oill leak from under the right side (passenger) head dripping on the starter..can somebody tell me the best course of action as i have recently found my self out of a job..i want to fix it right but as cheap as i can....let me guess retorqing the heads wont help huh? so what now guys


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you could try retorquing but yea it might not help....it depends on how bad the leak is and the gasket condition... prolly ought to try it anyway cant hurt....

There are no oil passages in the head gasket. It has to be valve cover or intake/valley leak seeping around the head gasket.

I agree with Curtis.

if there is no oil passages in the head how does the oil from the rocker arms get back to the oil pan.....i have checked the valve cover it is dry all the way around

Intake leakes are very common.

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Chet

there is a cover on the timing cover at the front right behind the serp belt on the same area/side, that oil will work its way back on the mddle/right side of the engine. check ther to see if that might be it. ive seen it once before and the eninge just drips oil pretty bad while the enigne is running. hope you can find it wherever the leak is.

Drain back oil passage's are on the intake manifold side of the front and rear of the head. They direct oil into the valley from where it drains back at the ends to the crankcase.

An oil leak such as you describe is usually the result of a leak thru the edge where the gaskets that seal the intake manifold from the head (down the sides) meet the oil sealing gaskets that cross under the front and rear of the manifold to seal the ends of the valley. This is an area that sees a lot of thermal movement and is hard to seal, under the best of circumstances they'll almost always leak given enough warm up and cool down cycles.

The other place where leaking oil is common is the rocker cover to head. Several things happen here like the retaining bolts backing out with time, or constant re tightening slowly deforms the sheet metal rail of the cover, squishing the gasket out till the seal is lost. At that point the rocker needs to be removed along with the old gasket. Before putting everything back together with a new gasket check the mounting holes. If the sheet metal around the holes is puckered make a simple repair. The technique is to take wrench socket that's a little bigger than the pucker, clamp the socket on a vise, you may need a short extension to hold it high enough the cover doesn't hit the vise first. Take a small hammer and tap the pucker back till the surface is flat. Use a set rocker bolt reinforcements (hold down tabs) everywhere except on the turns. Going around the corners you can either fabricate a reinforcement from these gadgets or shape something from a hardened washer or piece of metal. This will spread the fastening load over more area, helping to prevent the sheet-metal around the mounting hole from distorting into the gasket.

Bogie

Directly into the valley through holes in the head. The only thing that a head gasket seals are water and combustion gasses.