Fastener that drove me mad

Further into my project I'm all ready to pull the cylinder head off. All the fasteners are out, exhaust headers pulled away good to go. I start yanking on it.. won't budge. Ok that is after all to be expected. I tap around the outside with a dead blow hammer. It almost seems to be moving slightly, but no real progress. Tapping with the hammer became a little more violent... No deal. I don't have a gasket scraper because apparently you can't get those in stores :roll: . Was that last line sarcasm? I honestly don't know, other than I can't get one. So I took a flat screwdriver and a ball peen hammer and gently start tapping around the outside. Whaddya know? It moves a little. But not enough to free anything up. I don't know if that was a smart move and I hope I didn't screw up the mating surface between the head and the block. It only went in tiny way.

In frustration I stood there for awhile staring at the bike and sucking down a can of Big Rock: Honey Brown (nice Alberta beer). I crouched down looking at it and discovered this little a-s-s-h-o-l-e.



Although it shows it in a fastening diagram, nothing is mentioned about it in the manual. What's worse, I started to unscrew it until I no longer could. It unscrews until it hits that piece of... engine frame part? And thats it. I guess I'll have to remove that cross bar you see there to get it off and just to get off the head? It was getting late in the day and I was pissed off so I called it quits there. What the hell is the point of that being there?

Also, you'll note in the pic that only half the exhaust heading pipes are removed. The 2 on the right side came out easy enough. The 2 on the left however are too badly rusted into the collector pipe. I soaked em down with release all and tapped with the dead blow and they won't budge. I soaked the real good again and went in the house for half an hour to do some work on my guitar. Came back out and they still won't budge with force and dead blow tapping. I'll be able to get some sideways leverage on them once the head is off. They're pulled away from the head so thats good enough for now I guess.

 

Sorry this should have been in the XJ chat section. Mods free to move it.

 

That bolt is holding the cylinder block in place. The head finishes directly under the exhaust ports....and you have at least 2 more bolts to undo to get the head off (directly above where you've circled).

 

Holy shit! I didn't even notice those other 2!

Maybe I should avoid the beer while doing this.

HA, I feel like an idiot now. Apparently I was trying to separate not the head but the cylinder block from the crank case section. Maybe its kind of scary that its the section I was moving bit by bit... oops.

And thanks for pointing that out. After reading that I had a look at the manual and damn near bashed my head against the keyboard.

 

Yep - beer tastes best when you've downed tools....

 

And you'll have one more on the intake side just above the cam chain tensioner holding the head to the cylinder.

I think you have to take the head off first, then the cylinder. I dont think there is enough clearance to pull both at the same time.