Valve Cover Issues... Options

[tech_cruz787]

Sooo, spring break is next week and I was hoping that today I would fix MOST of my 171k miles 95 ST's oil leaking issues so I could head down to South Florida for a couple of days and actually enjoy myself... I went ahead and dropped the Number 2 oil pan, as I was changing my oil and filter as well today, and replaced the felpro gasket that was almost nonexistent. So, hopefully that takes care of a lot of the griminess from the bottom oil pan.

Next I wanted to take care of my valve cover gasket, the 4 stem seals, and the 4 grommets for the valve nuts, since just about everything has been spewing out at least a little bit of oil.

The complications started after I snapped my PCV valve that I had just replaced last oil change. Since it snapped I had no choice but to break the PCV grommet that the PCV valve connects to. I thankfully had an extra PCV valve. But the rest of the PCV grommet fell inside of the baffle part of the valve cover. I had to chisel it til it broke into small enough pieces so I could rattle them out. So, hopefully I can drive safely enough to Auto Zone and pray that they have that connector grommet.

Then I came to realize how difficult it is to remove the original stem seals. -___- After attempting to wiggle at least one off with a number of different pliers, I couldn't. I don't believe that I had/currently have the proper tools or technique. I changed the valve cover gasket, but still saw that some oil was seeping out of the bottom right corner, even after putting the suggested RTV there (Dont know what more I should do for that?).

The stem seals are a bit important to get to since I have been getting some white smoke from the tail pipe when the car has been sitting for over 12 or so hours and I have read that replacing this might be a solution. If anyone has any suggestions for these forsaken things I would appreciate it.