....OK, imagine the setting...it's early morning, you are only faintly aware of those war drums thundering in the background because your heart is beating so fast that the blood pressure pounding in your ears is drowning them out. With some trepidation you approach the top of the engine to look down and survey your enemy... and there, through the heavy oil mist, laughing at you, taunting you, and generally doing his best to make you think "I want my Mummy"...is RCG!!!! (Rocker Cover Gasket)....Boo hiss....
This is it, this is your moment of destiny, where your new-found sense of purpose will be tested to the core...you are almost paralysed with self-doubt: "I can't do this; I shouldn't be doing this; I'll get the garage to do this; maybe Mum will do this?"
Such thoughts and more will flash through your brain...hold fast fellow novice, quiver ye not as Frankie Howard once advised (or should have ) ...this is where you get magic potion no1 ( http://www.projectpuma.com/viewtopic.php?t=9307 ) and simply do an 'Enry Cooper and "splash it all over". Am feelin' a 70's vibe today! :grin:
By following Scuba's excellent guide you will soon find that, for all the intimidating posturing, RCG is, in fact, a bit of a pussy when it comes to removal, which just left a bit of cleaning up to do here:
065 by
G Whizz, on Flickr
and very soon he was laid out on my kitchen worktop! Easy, easy, easy! (Ah, 70's Sat telly!) So it was time to start polishing him off...using a bit of wire wool scourer for the heavier bits, then a wipe of WD40:
063 by
G Whizz, on Flickr
(Oh, and yes to answer your question, of course my darling is fine with my turning the kitchen into a temporary workshop, doesn't bat an eyelid or mutter a word, she's a complete gem about it! :roll: )
I now decided to strip him of his dignity (well, anything that was stuck to the gasket) to make sure he was going back nice, clean and compliant, and then did the same with the gulley he's housed in. Next, I put a line of the Loctite all the way around the gully to act as insurance given that I was reusing this gasket, even though it was a Ford one.
It was at this point that RCG revealed that he wasn't a stand-up guy; he was no toe-to-toe slugger; nope, the sneaky SOB preferred taking you down for a bit of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and ground and pound!
Oh, oh...suddenly things were not so "Easy, easy, easy"!
Try as I might I simply could not get the gasket back on/in. It now appeared about three-quarters of an inch too small, and every time I got one side or end in, the other would come out. It was like trying to wrestle a lubed-up octopus, and octo' had the Gracie moves not me!!
"That's right fool, I'm a pussy...I'm an octopussy, b'atch!", RCG goaded me with every slippery turn.
I thought maybe an extra pair of hands might help and as I didn't have time to grow them I got the missus in to help (no, of course she didn't mind) but that only resulted in us both ending up far too well acquainted with Loctite.
Now, if there's one thing I cannot stand it's an inanimate object that won't do what it's meant to (especially a lippy, slippy one) and for some reason I find it absurdly infuriating :evil: ; which in turn led me to do what any self-respecting male does in such circumstances, I blamed the missus.
I've come to realise over the years that this is a bit like drinking to forget your problems, you very briefly feel a bit better but it gets absolutely nothing solved and afterwards you just feel rotten on top of your original problem...but knowledge is pretty redundant without application so, very occasionally, it still happens.
Faced with an increasingly irrational me, who by now was not just talking to RCG but ranting at it while trying at the same time to hold it down and kick the cat (well something simply must "pay" this point), missus left me to it as she was off to work, curiously early.
I was now alone, staring into the abyss of defeat, a near-broken hero, chastened by his own hubris at thinking he could ever, ever tackle a task that even Hercules himself didn't attempt... am pretty sure I'm on safe ground with that one; what with him being mythical and motorless.
It was at that exact point, one Planck unit away from defeat, that I was visited by the Motoring Muse (it's the only "logical" reason I can come up with for what I then came up with) who told me to holdfast, that I needed fortitude... Oh, and what I really required was a slow cooker, a set of kitchen knives, several kilos of rice and a chopping board!
No, I wasn't stopping for lunch... this was my mad genius moment!
077 by
G Whizz, on Flickr
You may laugh, you may scoff, you may think "Oooh, rice! I'm hungry!" but this actually worked! I kid you not!
Basically, I wiped the gasket and gully to make sure any excess/smeared sealant was dealt with (but leaving enough to seal) and that the flat side (which would be facing down when put back on the engine) was clean so it wouldn't stick to the chopping board and then I get one end in place and started to slide the chopping board along, making sure that as I slid I pushed the gasket into where it should go and also kept adding further weight as it went along.
Huzzah! Having finally shown RCG who was boss, and while waiting for it to set, I made sure sure that the face the gasket was to meet on the engine was clean as a whistle. Some bits are trickier than others to get to, as you can see from this photo I took:
079 by
G Whizz, on Flickr
Now, in ScubaSteve's guide, he put more sealant on this face but because of the tricky bits I decided to put it on the flat face of the gasket instead, just be carefull then when you're putting it back on the engine is all.
With that done and all reassembled I quickly popped in the new plugs (potion 2 don't forget) and stood back to admire this:
054 by
G Whizz, on Flickr
That's right, it's just another Puma engine bay...but it's my lil' ole Puma, and it's now been serviced by lil' ole me, AND it's had it's rocker cover sorted, by ME!
The same guy who's been sat there all this time, thinking, "I can't do that"... well, as it turns out, I can... and so can YOU!
Novices, get your motoring machismo on and save yourself some moolah!
If you follow the advice and the How to guides I've listed then you WILL be able to do these jobs. I promise. Pinky swear!
I got there, with a just bit of perseverance (ok, and a bit of swearing)...that was all it was!
You didn't reeeallly think it took magic, muses, and beating down a cage-fighting, wise-ass gasket and his mates did you?
:shock: