3VZ-FE - did I make a serious mistake?

[71Corolla]

Did a whole whack of stuff to my 3VZ the last 2 days. Timing belt, water pump, crank seal, drive belts, both valve cover gaskets, spark plug seals, cleaned IAC, new plugs, other stuff I forgot.

I removed the cam bearing caps because it makes is very easy to remove the camshaft seals. For some reason I decided to put RTV on the caps. I highlighted in red (see pic) where I put the sealant. I didn't use much, but enough where it did squish out a bit. Don't ask me why I put RTV here, I was burnt out and for some reason remembered reading about how the service manual calls for it. I checked, the manual doesn't say anything about putting sealant here.

So is that extra sealant going to cause a greater clearance than there should be? There is a groove in each side of the bearing cap. I'm wondering if the sealant will create a too great a clearance and prematurely damage the cam and bearings. Thoughts? To take the bearing caps off I would basically have to do the entire job all over again.

BTW, this is not an actual picture of a 3VZ cap, but it looks more or less the same (minus the bolts) and has the grooves.

[carsrus]

Did you wait for it to set before torque the bolts down?

If you didnt I wouldent worry as the rtv basically got pushed out. There arent any grooves for sealant so it just got smushed out.

[71Corolla]

I torqued them down right away. Hopefully you're right and the sealant just got pushed out and won't do anything.

Thanks for the response.

[Mister_Perkins]

I put sealant outside and inside the grooves. I've driven the car almost 4k miles and haven't had a problem or leakage.

[Tech1984]

You did exactly as you should have. You've done a great job. No problems as far as I can see.

[Mister_Perkins]

IIRC your supposed to put the sealant on the outside of the cap only anyways. I messed up and put it on all 4 flat spots, but like I said I haven't had any problems

[71Corolla]

Thanks guys.

[doozergreengrass]

I also changed out my cam shaft seal in the same manner (removing the cap, but on 5sfe). I can't remember exactly where I put the RTV at the time! If too much was used, and the bolts were torqued to spec, where would this excess RTV go? could it be causing any kind of problem? I'm tempted to tear the v/c off and inspect or re-do that seal as my engine is making a weird noise and I can't locate it!