October 2018
I wanted to replace the OEM valve covers which were terribly discolored. Even when they are in great shape, they are pretty unattractive. The OEM magnesium valve covers have a tendency to discolor and the castings are usually pretty porous.
There's a lot of hardware that surrounds the valve covers which makes removing them pretty difficult. Since I had to remove this hardware anyway, I figured it was time to think about getting rid of some of it if possible.
I installed an Air Injection Pump delete kit. I'm estimating that this removed about 10 pounds of hardware from the car. This modification makes accessing the water pump and servicing the valve covers much easier.
The only snag that I ran into was that the OEM serpentine belt didn't fit after installing the kit. The kit did offer the option of moving the alternator outward from the engine to allow you to continue using the OEM belt. But if you moved the alternator outward, you would lose the rear alternator support bar. I chose to keep the alternator support bar which meant that I would need to find a different belt.
Once the kit was installed, I took a tape measure and threaded it around all of the pulleys to get a measurement for the replacement serpentine belt. A little research on the internet, yielded a suitable replacement belt.
Now that the Air Pump is gone, I have noticed that the engine area is quieter. I never realized that the Air Pump was so noisy.
