Valve cover gasket change help

[snrusnak]

Hey all, I'm replacing the valve cover gasket on my wife's aveo(think it's an 04, might be 05) tomorrow and was looking at it today to see if it'd be hard. Looks extremely easy, just remove plug wires and other crap in the way(sensor plug near cam gears), unbolt, and replace. I'm replacing because the o rings around the spark plug holes leak oil. I replaced the plugs/wires today so want to keep the oil out of there.

The only thing is there is this part:



The hose (about 1" or so) that seems to have a "permanent" clamp around it. It comes off the side of the valve cover, I assume it's a breather vent of some sort. Can I just cut that "permanent" clamp and replace with a normal screw tight clamp?

Thanks!

I also took apart and cleaned the TB and the IAC and TPS and WOW it was all dirty. Runs so much better now. There was about 1/16" of gunk on all of it.

[jayman]

yeah you can just cut it and put a different one on

[snrusnak]

Great, thanks for confirming!

[snrusnak]

I changed it out, was very easy. Took some time cleaning surfaces to make sure it was all ready to go. I put some RTV in certain areas where I thought it might leak(corners). Then read the service manual and it said to do just that, so I'm glad I did. This ought to stop the oil leaking into the spark plug holes. With all the tune up stuff I did this weekend we are hoping to gain back about 5mpg(long over due tune up). Had the original air filter from when we bought it(bought it at 70k miles and now has 120k miles....I think the filter was the original one). Plugs also had who knows how many miles, same with the wires. I went ahead and put a K&N drop in filter in there since I was replacing it, and also cleaned up the TB and the sensors. I started the car but haven't driven it yet(letting the RTV dry). We'll see if the wife notices it driving better going to work(it was doing a "surging" thing at idle sometimes....I'm sure due to the dirty TB and sensors and old plugs).

I want to practice some welding so thought I can maybe weld up a 2" pipe from the fake fog light area to the airbox. Would be functional and give me something to weld lol.