Valve cover gasket (rear) leaking.

[doglegdon]

Gents/Ladies,
Found a small but nonetheless disturbing oil leak from my rear valve cover, while installing the Scottoiler vacuum line, are these type of gaskets readily available in UK, off the shelf? If so where can find them? If not, can they be ordered?
I presume it will be a tank-off jobbie, involving loads of cursing, wailing, gnashing of teeth and skinned knuckles etc etc. Anyone have any personal experiences or tips on wot to do/not to do that would be helpful.
Have glanced thru the Haynes and they always make it all look so painfully easy and unmessy.
The leaks's not bad my mechanic says(famous last words). So, as I don't have enough time this hitch home, I'll get it looked at next month if I can find the gasket/s.

[robelst]

David Silver Spares should be able to supply one real quickly.

The rear one is relatively easy to replace, compared to the hardly accessible front one. Tank will have to come off though.
It's really important the internal square-shaped bit of the gasket that locks off the "rocker-room" from the breather-tunnel remains in the correct position: It seems this part of the gasket is manufactured at least 1 milimetre too big and tends to slip off the edge. The problem if this happens is that oil may get into the engine breather. These are not alarming amounts of oil, yet the breather-hose still fills up relatively quickly.
The fact that the rocker cover needs to be slid on from under an angle (there's a bit of pipework blocking the way) doesn't help either because the gasket can easily hook onto the tappets and come off.

Last time I cheated by using a tiny drop of non-aggressive multi-purpose glue to keep this part of the gasket in place It worked well although the use of glue is tricky of course because some types of glue may have solvents that could damage the gasket.

The Africa Twin is an excellent bike for making easy tasks quite adventurous

[mal]

The cost of the gasket from David Siver is £8-50 plus vat & postage www.davidsilverspares.co.uk, I had a look at their website

[YEN_POWELL]

Mine used to leak from exactly the same place, dated from when I had the camchains renewed and the valve cover came off and went back on again (as Robelst said, quite easily, especially compared to the front which has more stuff in the way). I kept meaning to replace the gasket but never got round to it, so it leaked for about 60,000 miles.

[Lord Stig]

I've got a leak around the rear cylinder too - not sure if it is the same problem. I just let it leak - it keeps the nice new shock lovely and rust free! Something to worry about? Nah!

Stig

[GSPD750]

They all sweat a little bit of oil that will only attract dust and turn black.
I just wipe it off periodically. Now, if you have a running leak and can see a flow of oil...then yes order a gasket. Otherwise I would not worry.

If you do replace then don't forget to remove the fuel shutoff lever before you lift the tank.