Valley gasket thoughts....

Hi guys
I am planning on replacing my old metal valley gasket. It is a 4.6 GEMS and has been weeping oil front and rear. I am sure it is not the pulley seals on the front and at the rear the trail of oil starts high up.
Checking the rocker covers I am also fairly sure they are not leaking as it looks clean and dry since I last cleaned it over.
However, my rocker covers themselves look like a dog's dinner with corrosion and pealing/flaking paint that flaps about in the wind of the viscous fan.
I thought while I am doing the valley gasket I will take off the covers, strip them back, paint and install new gaskets there too.

I bought one of the black composite valley gaskets after reading that it is the way to go. then I came across this site here: RANGE ROVER WORLD South Africa: Rover V8 - Critical engine failure from composite valley gasket

Has anybody seen this kind of thing with a composite gasket?

What are your recommendations? Anything else worth changing while I am doing this?

Cheers and thanks in advance.

i havent seen it and a very large number of composite gaskets have been used for years

I would think of it like this... How many Rover V8s are running composite gaskets? And how many times have you seen failure like that before?

I also decided to tart up my rocker covers while they were off the engine. Blingin' Don't forget to clean inside as well as out!!!

http://i.imgur.com/IUcBsEt.jpg



When you take apart your engine, don't forget pictures.

EDIT: james beat me to it, left post in edit for too long!

Great, that was my feelings too guys.

Pics will be on the way when I get onto the job.

Just to decide on colour of rocker cover paint then. I already have some red and black VHT paint (not in the same can of course) from a recent semi restoration and reseal of my Porsche engine. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I use hx7 in the bmw but am a beliver of 20w50 with lots of zinc in the rv8

Black rocker covers please, we are British!

10W-40 Diesel semi-synthetic has proved its worth to me, especially over the trip to France over the past few weeks, that poor old V8 had its guts thrashed a lot on some of the big hills with the trailer behind.

Hardly used any significant amounts of oil or water, well pleased.

Peter