Trouble removing valve cover.

[Floki]

Is there a trick to this? I'm stuck on the hose that goes to the thermostat. There is a lip protruding from the cover that is hooked on that hose. I gave up because I have work in a few but the cover wouldn't sit back in the right position so I covered it with napkins. Any help with this guys?

Also, in the kawiforums DIY they say to remove the washers from the cover but I didn't see any. All my cover screws seem to not have washers, scratching my head.

[red5]

The washers often stick to the cover, 3 of mine did.

To get mine off I remove these...

- Coolant res
- R coil
- R upper Engine Mount
- Cooling hose from the head the the thermo
- Little tab mounted behind the thermo that accepts the long bolt that holds the coolant res

Going by memory so I may have missed something but with these gone you should be able to lift the cover and rotate the hard pipe coming from the head toward the back. Then the cover comes out the R side. Still a bi**h though.

[alex.s]

Originally Posted by Floki

Is there a trick to this? I'm stuck on the hose that goes to the thermostat. There is a lip protruding from the cover that is hooked on that hose. I gave up because I have work in a few but the cover wouldn't sit back in the right position so I covered it with napkins. Any help with this guys?

Also, in the kawiforums DIY they say to remove the washers from the cover but I didn't see any. All my cover screws seem to not have washers, scratching my head.

slightly pick up the entire thing until its blocked by the water outlet tube. then lift the outer exhaust-side edge a few degrees more so that when you rotate the cover counter-clockwise when looking down on it, the exhaust side goes over the cam cage and the nub slides out from under the pipe. make sure not to lose or break the little rubber thing that the tube's mounting bracket sits inside of (and is pushed down on and secured by the valve cover itself) so now once it has rotated out of the way just slide the cover out the lefthand side.

you have to take off the top mount for the valving for the kleen air, and also the mounting bracket that holds the screw that mounts the water canister thing. just take everything you can off. give yourself more room

[alex.s]

not having enough room is the biggest reason for failure on valve jobs. not having enough room leads to stripped bolts, dropped parts where they shouldn't be dropped. it leads to problems so give yourself more room

[cuong-nutz]

Or if you have already drained the coolant, just pop the coolant pipe off! More room!

[alex.s]

Originally Posted by cuong-nutz

Or if you have already drained the coolant, just pop the coolant pipe off! More room!

but if you do that make absolutely sure that you don't accidentally drop the little rubber piece down the water outlet hole. wound up having to completely disassemble the engine and remove the head after doing that.

[tubarney]

Originally Posted by cuong-nutz

Or if you have already drained the coolant, just pop the coolant pipe off! More room!

What he said^.

Drain the coolant. Spend the 10 bucks and save yourself a lot of trouble.

If coolant still good, be a tight ass like me, drain into clean bucket, then use coffee filters to filter the crap out and re-use.