valve cover leak

I have some open letter cobra cast aluminum valve covers, and when the engine is run up to about 3000 rpm they allow a little oil onto the header causing it to smoke a lot. The only problem I can see it the bottom of the cover is not machined, but are they supposed to be? or are they just let with the sand cast finish? I just ordered some $50 earls gaskets and hopefull will take car of this problem, because the dude at the dyno place doesent want to dyno a smaking car. (I got a really good baseline of 275 RWTQ at 4000 rpm from a 302 before it had to be shut down.)

I'm thinking that the Earl's gaskets will fix you up.
I've been using some trick v/c gaskets from
Victor Reinz (part # VS 38300HTC) on one of the
289's. No problems with leaks so far. They are
composite- cork/steel/cork. About as pricey as
the Earl's units but not reusable.
The open letter valve covers (particularly the
original ones) weren't the greatest in quality
as far as where they mate to the cyl head.
Back in the day we used to glue the gaskets
to the head and to the vc using Ford's Gasket
and Trim Adhesive. Too bad that stuff is no
longer available, it worked pretty good cuz
nothing ever leaked.....

lately ive been putting a thin skin of good RTV silicone ,on both sides of the new gasket,it kind of fills in thoses bad spots,and less likely to leak, there is a torgue spec for those bolts for a reason ok bill
[addsig]

You could always take some 500, 800, and then 1000 grit sandpaper and a some glas and lap the bottoms of the covers so they are nice and smooth. For gaskets on my stang I ran just some felpro's I think there called permatex, they are blue with a a steel core with inner rings to prevent over torque on the gaskets. Havent had a a drip on my VC [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_tup.gif[/img]

the $50 gaskets worked and now the car doesent smoke like it has 500000 miles on it. Now time to bolt on the new 650 DP and head to the dyno