I've fought leaky valve cover gaskets on my '85 LTD since I bought it. Driving back from Seattle they (original I presume) started leaking pretty badly if you got much above 70mph and would start pouring smoke out the back of the car. I put some new Fel-Pro cork gaskets on it and it seemed to seal it up. Last couple of months I've smelled something burning and sure enough the valve cover gaskets are leaking again. #1 on these engines I've learned through the years is make sure the valve cover bolts are tight which they were. The cork gaskets were installed properly. I just hate cork.

I installed a molded rubber Victor Reinz gasket (151053301) on the driver's side tonight and I'm pretty happy with it. It has a rigid plastic frame with rubber seals on either side. Makes it much easier to install when you don't have to worry about the gasket falling off the rail when you snake the valve cover into place. It has counterbores at each bolt hole to accept the protrusions on the valve covers so getting everything properly lined up is extremely easy. I'm pretty confident these will seal and hold.

I saw that Fel-Pro also has a molded rubber gasket (VS50212T), but I could only find them on RockAuto (couldn't even find them on Fel-Pro's website ???) for some reason and I could get the Victor Reinz gaskets locally. The Fel-Pro's look like the exact same construction so I'm sure those would work fine too. Price is about the same as the cork gaskets so it seems like a no-brainer to me.

I'll update after we drive 1000 miles over the next week.