1999 Yukon Valve cover removal help

[El Electrico]

I am replacing the gasket on my valve covers. The driver side(left) does not come out easily. The A/C, PS mount in front of it overlaps the valve cover and it needs to be unfastened and pulled away about an inch from the heads in order to get the valve cover out.

I have removed from the mount:
(2) bolts
(1) nut attached to the stud
(1) bolt at the bottom
Detached A/C compressor from mount (4) bolts.

Does anyone have experience/knowledge about this?

Is there another bolt on the mount that I may have missed?

Does the Power steering pulley need to come out?

The PS unit seems to be attached to the mount only. Not attached to the engine.

 

[OR VietVet]

Been a few years and hopefully an OBS owner will chime in but if I remember right, all that is mounted to a bracket bolted to the front of the engine that also holds all of the accessories and that has to be loosened. Remove that air snorkel and take pics again. Can't see real good in there. Hopefully someone else will chime in.

Not gonna change what I typed about the air snorkel but that is the rad hose with convoluted tubing on it. DUH!

 

[El Electrico]

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[El Electrico]

Been a few years and hopefully an OBS owner will chime in but if I remember right, all that is mounted to a bracket bolted to the front of the engine that also holds all of the accessories and that has to be loosened. Remove that air snorkel and take pics again. Can't see real good in there. Hopefully someone else will chime in.

Thanks. Yes, I am going to try some more pics when the rain stops. The air intake is on the other side. The upper radiator hose can be confused with the air intake.

 

[OR VietVet]

Man, that is funny. That convoluted tubing around the hose threw me. Again, some OBS guys/gals need to chime in.

 

[exp500]

You have 3or 4 bolts holding that AC bracket to front of motor. May have to pull P/S pulley to reach one, usually not, but you can touch it with finger. You do have to loosen P/S bolts around exhaust enough for some wobble. Just lean the AC fwd enough to get cover off. Then put it back temp so you can adjust valves while you are there. Its a PITA. But only every 50K.

 

[El Electrico]

You have 3or 4 bolts holding that AC bracket to front of motor. May have to pull P/S pulley to reach one, usually not, but you can touch it with finger. You do have to loosen P/S bolts around exhaust enough for some wobble. Just lean the AC fwd enough to get cover off. Then put it back temp so you can adjust valves while you are there. Its a PITA. But only every 50K.

Thanks exp500, I did think there might be another one behind the P/S pulley. I have added some degreaser to that area so I can see it better. I will certainly try doing these suggestions.

 

[YukonGTmaster]

You have enough loose, to get the clearance you need. When I did my lower intake, I had a helper pull with some force on the A/C bracket, which will give you the clearance you need. I didn’t pull my P/S pulley off. Yard on it!

 

[OR VietVet]

Brute force! That's the ticket!

 

[east302]

There should be three bolts and one nut, but (going by memory here) there was another nut down low. Pull on it and you should see it hang on the bottom if that’s the case.
It may have been the PS bracket arm (#7) that bolts to the block but I don’t remember for sure.

 

[El Electrico]

Success! I was finally able to separate the mount from the head and remove the valve cover. I got my son to "yard on it" yesterday as YukonGTmaster suggested while I removed the valve cover.

Also, thanks to east302 for the diagrams, they helped visualize what was behind the pulley. In this case the #10 bolts and #12 nut were the ones I removed. The one #10 bolt at the bottom had enough clearance to unfasten from behind the pulley but not to be removed. I guess it was designed that way.

I re-installed the valve covers and connected everything back. The truck started right away, idled for 10 minutes and no oil spots on the driveway so far. Will drive more as the week progresses.

Great thanks to all of you for the guidance, encouragement and help!