Here’s one part on your engine that is critical to it’s life:

The oil filter rotary joint.  Know it, love it…

This joint needs to be carefully inspected every time you change the oil.  You should be cleaning the oil filter every oil change as well.  Pull the oil filter cover on the right side and check out the spring loaded rotary joint.  Make sure it’s in good shape and the spring is not messed up or catching on anything.  The rotary joint piece should be nice and springy, and also nice and smooth where it bears on the oil filter cap.

Then check out the part of the cap that the rotary joint runs on.  You want to make sure it’s flat and smooth.  If the rotary joint is eating it’s way into the cap you’ll soon have trouble.

And the trouble?  Generally the cam, lifters and  cam bearings suffer first from the lack of oil pressure.  Not good - it generally makes a pretty big mess.

This is usually a pretty trouble free part – but needs regular inspection as the consequences of it having any trouble are so dire.

It’s probably also worth noting that we usually replace the 6mm phillips screw that holds the cap in with a 6mm allen bolt the same length.  Als0 – you should be using blue loctite on that bolt as you really don’t want it coming loose.

And finally – after you remove the 6mm bolt holding on the cam you can use an 8mm bolt as a puller to remove the cap – the inside of the little boss that the 6mm bolt passes through is threaded 8mm.  Screw in an 8mm allen bolt and it will eventually start pushing on the end of the crank and push that little cap right out.

Cheers -

Michael