My advice is, leave it alone. There's a lot of members here that never did it. Me included. If you have no leaks and if it's running just fine, don't mess with it. I almost believe that retorquing the head bolts is way overrated. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

Make sure you have a good supply of profanity for removing the rocker cover.  It is an interference fit with the frame.

Phelonius

Pondog wrote on 11/20/10 at 05:41:06:



I do it according to Suzuki's recommended maintenance intervals.

Pretty straightforward job, if a bit tedious.  I use Permatex® Ultra Grey® Rigid High-Torque RTV Silicone Gasket Maker on the head cover, and Permatex® Ultra Rubber Gasket Sealant & Dressing on the o-rings and the camshaft end cap.

While it is true that many here never torque the head bolts, you have to ask yourself, "Do you feel lucky?"

Below is a copy-and-paste of a post I made a while back concerning this subject:


I think the choice of sealant here is fairly important.  Since the job is such a PITA, you don't want to go back in there a few miles later for an oil leak.

I used to use Permatex® Ultra Copper® Maximum Temperature RTV Silicone Gasket Maker with fairly good luck.  I'd just have some minor seepage starting after about 4000 miles.

The last time I did this job, I used Permatex® Ultra Grey® Rigid High-Torque RTV Silicone Gasket Maker.  I got a leak after about 600 miles (under the front, port-side corner of the head cover), but I think that was my fault due to a faulty torque protocol (keep in mind that the Ultra Grey sets up pretty rigid):

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When installing the cylinder head cover, the FSM says to tighten the cylinder head bolts "diagonally."  Clymers says the same thing, but adds to tighten the bolts in the middle of the cylinder head cover first.

With this vague guidance in mind, here is the bolt tightening order I've arrived at after removing and installing the cylinder head cover a few times (loosening order (e.g. when removing the cylinder head) will be the reverse of the tightening order):








My methodology was to start with the inner-most bolts and move diagonally as much as possible.  This is just the pattern I have been using.  Your way most likely will be better, please share if so.

I torque these bolts using a 0-200 in-lb beam torque wrench in three stages (snug, half-torque, full-torque).

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So, off the head cover came again.  This time, I did things a little different:

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You may have noticed that, in the above post, I did not consider torquing the bolt that goes in the top left hole in the pictures.

This is because that bolt is also used to secure the left decorative chrome head cover.  With that cover in place, some of the other head cover bolts would be hard to access.

However, if you don't mind going through a little extra trouble, you can torque the head cover in a more complete fashion.

Here is what I used to take the place of the decorative head cover - a stack of washers:





I just placed a bunch of washers on the bolt.  This allowed me to torque the bolt down properly.

After the gasket sealant used on the head cover was cured, I removed the washers and installed the left decorative chrome head cover.


Here is the torque order I used with the extra bolt in play:




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No leaks yet.....I hope it works this time!

BTW, this stuff seems to be working well on the rubber plug, along with the rubber camshaft end cap:  Permatex® Ultra Rubber Gasket Sealant & Dressing.

IHTH someone!

You don't need to re tighten heads bolts,You will probability have trouble if you do.

You have to do it this way because the bolt is the stock bolt that is required to mount the glory cap.

The bolt is trapped, installed when the head cover comes down.  You can't swap it out with a shorter bolt (or swap out a shorter bolt later with the stock long one).

No, we're just coming from two different sets of assumptions, mine being that I'm never going to put the cheesy chrome covers back on.

Sure, if you're keeping the decorative chrome cover, for the sake of torquing down the valve cover, you could do Digger's stack of washers (or a length of metal tubing, or a block with a hole drilled through it). But, of course, when you remove the dome nut to install the chrome cover, you'll un-torque what you just went to the trouble to torque.

I question that bolt's contribution to proper sealing, since it's outside the critical area of surface mating, sort of out on a little peninsula. Sure, once everything is installed, it might help a little, but only a little.

If it were really critical to sealing, they would have designed a more robust fastening system. Do you imagine the factory does something like Digger does when they build the engines? Or is it more likely a digitally controlled multi-headed wrench torques down the valve cover and then (right away, or maybe much further down the assembly line) someone installs the chrome cover over the flopping captured bolt?

The science side of me wonders though what other variables might have been involved. Was it just the bolt, or was it the way the sealant was applied? I don't know.