*yawn* A boring comparison of B6 and B7 valve covers

**pwest15** · 05-17-2018 04:21 PM

I recently replaced the valve covers in my B6 S4 with a set from a low mileage B7. On the surface, it may not look like too much is different but we all know it's not about how she walks on the streets, its about what she's like in the sheets. I'm writing this out of pure bored interest and because I haven't really found much information about it in my one google search. Maybe this info will help someone 50 year from now, who knows.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the valve cover exteriors side by side:

As you can see there are only a few minor cosmetic differences. Structurally, the B6 valve covers are made of magnesium whereas the B7 valve covers are made of a high-temp plastic. This means that sections of the valve covers that stick out need to be a little more reinforced on the B7. You can see this reinforcement in the little fins that extend from the valve cover body to the holes where the bolts go.

Another difference is that the B7 valve covers use all the same bolts unlike the B6 which uses two longer bolts for the center of the valve cover. Other than that, not much is going on up top.

However, underneath is a different story. Here are some pics of the undersides of the valve covers:

The first difference on the underside here is a lack of a protective coating on the B7 valve covers. The coating on my B6 valve covers was stripped off before powder coating but other's who have untouched B6 valve covers know the pain of removing them only to find flakes of coating coming off them and getting chewed up in the valve train. The B7 valve covers don't need a coating to protect the plastic so they just take on a hue of used motor oil.

Probably the biggest difference on the underside is how the crankcase ventilation systems are set up. This lets excess pressure from the crankcase get vented through the pcv system. The B6 uses little pickups with small gaskets that connect the valve cover to these mounts in between the camshaft main caps on the valve train. People replacing valve cover gaskets on B6's know it's a bitch to get the gaskets to line up and insert without pinching. On the B7, the heads lack the little piece circled in red towards the back of the photo below. This is because the B7 valve covers have much bigger, open inlets towards the front and back of each cover. Lastly, you can see in the pictures above that the oil distribution baffle under the oil caps are different to accomodate for the channels in the B7 valve covers.

Here's that pic of the a B6 head with the ventilation attachment thing towards the back while missing from the front to accommodate the oil filling port:

Anyway, that's all I've got. Hope it helps

**'88Jetta16v** · 12-01-2023 10:05 AM

Here I am 5.5 years later searching the internet for the difference between B6 and B7 valve covers and trying to find good pics of B7 covers for a customer quote without having them in hand yet. Great work, thanks!