Before returning to college, I was a mechanic at a Yamaha dealership
for five years where I worked on motorcycles, snowmobiles, etc. and
I often used a nifty sealant called 'Yamabond'. I am in the early stages
of restoring an MGB GT and I have decided that I want to be able to
park in my friend's driveways, and I don't want to have to file an
environmental impact statement when I visit a state park, so I have
been using this marvelous modern goo every time the opportunity presents
itself. So far, I have used it to seal the valve cover gasket, the gasket
on the back of the dif pumpkin, the outer edge of two transmission seals
that I replaced, and the outer edge of the rear main seal on the engine.
My car does not leak a DROP of oil. And I haven't even done the oil pan
gasket yet.
Yamabond comes in a black tube, with yellow letters, and it is available
at any Yamaha dealer for a couple or three dollars. It is used by Yamaha
when assembling both two and four stroke engines for the crankcase halves.
On a two stroke, this is a particularly important seal. It is an aluminum
colored substance, and has the consistancy of the cheese on a freshly
cooked deep dish pizza, which makes it stringy and a pain to work with,
but it beats blue RTV to death, in my opinion. It is made so that if you
accidentally spooje too much on, and some runs into the guts of your engine,
that's OK cuz it won't plug anything up.
I had to pull my valve cover back off the other day to do a valve
adjustment, and the gasket came apart in about six pieces. I simply glued
them all back together with Yamabond and it still doesn't leak a bit.
And my valve cover is all warped and bent. It can be rocked on it's
mating surface on a smooth table.
Yamabond is also a good thing to put on the threads of drain plugs
before screwing them back in, although I prefer Teflon tape.
just my two cents...
jMG
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