Hello all!
So today I decided it was time to attempt to change my cover gasket. Its been a lovely day, a little bit windy but otherwise fine.
I grabbed everything I thought I would need and went out to the triumph, popped the bonnet up and began to pull the HT leads away. I was amazed how easily the screws for the cam cover came undone! I was expecting them to be very difficult to unscrew but they came away no trouble at all.
I lifted the cam cover away, pulling it towards me to get around the overflow pipe. The old gasket came up and stuck to the cover a bit and broke. Then as I pulled it away I realised it looked completely different to the new one I had
It had these blocks attached to each end. Heres a picture of the bit I mean:
I thought that was it, I just assumed I had the wrong gasket. I tried to pull the gasket away from this new piece I'd found on it, but it wasn't having any of it. I rebuilt the engine as best I could with the broken old gasket and walked away. I had a look online and realised what I was in fact looking at was the old gasket stuck fast to the 'cambox u end plug'. I decided to go back and make sure it was definitely all one piece and couldn't be separated. Luckily with a bit of pulling and a screwdriver, along with some soapy water I managed to get them off and cleaned up! No doubt the cover would benefit from some new ones at some point though!
I cleaned everything up and replaced the gasket with the new cork one:
Had a bit of trouble starting but that was down to not putting the HT leads on quite right
after that everything looked good! I found loads of oil caked on the front at the top too so hopefully it has actually been leaking from the cover gasket. It certainly looked pretty bad!
All in all not too bad for my first proper mechanic-ness! Lots of help from my girlfriend too!
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this evening went for a quick drive down the shops, and oil came out everywhere. Not good at all. Going to have a look in the morning and see where I went wrong. Hopefully the gasket sealant didn't do too much of a good job otherwise I'm in trouble!