ANother question about valve adjustments......

[Sandman9270]

This one is pretty quick.  I went to get the gasket adhesive everyone says you need.  I want to be sure, do I want GASKET SEALENT or GASKET MAKER.  I assume it's sealant.  If so, which one.  Permatex makes like FOUR different kinds.  One had a nuimber two on the tube, one had a one, etc.  Can any valve adjustment experts tell me which kind in particular I need?

[Bob Holland]

If you are talking about the valve cover gasket, you do not need any sealer if the gasket is in good condition. Clean it good, clean the grove in the cover and the mating surface on the head.
When installing the valve cover, I use a little white grease in the grove to hold the seal/gasket in place.

[Red01]

Just a dab of a silcone RTV gasket maker in the corners of the half-moon cam plugs on the cam cover gasket that is oil resistant and able to withstand engine operating temps. In the Permatex line, their Ultra Black, Ultra Blue or High Temp RTV (orange) will work fine. You can also use a dab of this stuff to hold the tower gaskets and cover gasket in place anywhere you suspect it might move, but you do not need to put it everywhere.

[Sandman9270]

Thanks guys!  Maybe I'll just dab a little in there.  So it IS the gasket MAKER you guys were talking about.  I'm STILL waiting on the adjuster/driver tool from partsfish as well as the ignition gasket....I may just go ahead and start and see if anything needs adjusting....got the gap wrenches anyway.

[PieterH2]

I have done the valve adjustment job on my Bandit 1200 yesterday (12/05) and despite having read all the instructions/warnings I had a small mishap that made the job a pain.

When I replaced the valve cover the dowel on the left front of the engine fell out staight into the oil journal below the outlet cam. To find this bugger was a mission to say the least but I was lucky enough to find it. Below was what I had to do:

a) Drain engine oil and hope it fell all the way through to the sump drain plug (Did not happen for me)
b) Used a magnet from a speaker and tried to drag it from inside the engine to the sump drain hole (No luck as I did not know for sure where in the engine it was)
c) Disconnected the two banjo fittings from the oil cooler and drained the oil hoping the dowel might fall out there. (No luck)
d) Removed the entire exhaust and oil cooler to have access to the sump. Sump is quite easy to remove (Many bolts though but accesable)
e) The dowel was not in the sump either and by this time I felt that this Bandit will never run again.
f) At the bottom of the sump there are two pipes that feed the oil from the cam cover back into the sump, I used a small magnet stuck to the end of a piece of thin metal and pushed it softly into the oil drain pipe, when I took it out the dowel sat on the magnet.

It was a pain to get it out but at least I found it and I hope that this post may help someone else that made this small mistake. Filling her up with oil this afternoon, hope I wont find leaks