TOPIC:

I guess that is what they are called. The rubber manafolds that connect the carbs to the head. What is the best way to remove them? Mine are torn near the mounting flange. I have had a 3/8 ratchet with a #3 bit and the screws wont budge. I might have to try seal them with silicone or epoxy. Not worth breaking a screw off in the head....

Can these parts be found(if I can remove them)?

try heating the aluminum around screw holes with a torch then smack screw heads with a hammer.when you install the new ones run botteming tap through bolt holes and put anti seize on the threads

I did find some. Yeah I'm gonna have to heat these up and try. Never had to take these of a bike before.

Just a suggestion

Z1E Impact Driver

Post edited by: Patton, at: 2007/03/28 23:52

There is a surplus center in town that has those. I'll have to cut the rubber off of the carb holder in order to use one of those, so I had better have the replacements in hand first.

Use a hand impact driver with #3 phillips bit. That is the ONLY way you have a chance to NOT screw up the head. If you do screw up the head, use a dremmel with cut off wheel and cut a SLOT in the head and use a FLAT blade with the impact driver. You can also try the heat, as already noted. Harbor Freight impact drivers are cheap... I generally buy 3 or 4 of them at a time just to get the bits. I use an old Craftsman but the original bits are long gone. Since this driver is over 30 years old, I don't bother take it back for their free replacement for the bits... (I have tossed them long ago).

Actually I had the exact same problem this weekend on my 440LTD. My manifolds were screwed in with rounded philips head screws. On the advice of Ibsen from www.kz400.com, I used vice grips to really clamp down on the screws and was able to get them all turned out, no problem.

My screws are in good shape, I was really wrenching hard on them.

Will try the impact driver...

Thanks all.

Even with the vice grips i had to REALLY give it some welly to turn the screws out, they were jammed in pretty hard. I feel I got better leverage with the vice grips than if I was using a wrench, but yeah, try with the impact driver but I dont know how easy it will be to get one in there and hit it with a hammer at a straight angle? Not a lot of room there.

Well after two evenings of grinding and hammering I managed to get them all out. Those are some very though machine screws. I had to slot all 4 of them with a hacksaw.

I got to looking at this bike (again the first 440 I have owned) and it looks to me like the drive belt is a real pain to change. The belt on this bike is fine, but where do you find these drive belts?

I had that same problem last night. What I did was use vise grips on the top two screws then I pushed counter clockwise on the rubber. This turned my bottom screw enough that the bottom screw unstuck and I could take it out with a screwdriver. I then went to Canadian Tire and got some new allen bolts to replace these bolts with so I should no longer have the problem of not being able to remove them in the future.

I would also suggest that if you are going to replace them, you could try to remove the top screws with vise grips then break the rubber off so that you can use vise grips on the bottom bolts once the rubber is out of the way.

Good luck...

gussie_pei wrote:

.... and got some new allen bolts to replace these bolts with ....

Now that sounds like a good plan. But,,, before you can replace them with new, you have to remove the old.
To that end, I wish I'd had more time to get on the forum in the recent past. I would have suggested one little step, for the hand impact driver that has helped me out, _a lot_ in the past.
Using a hammer on the end of the bit only, no handle, pound/tap your tightest fitting impact bit into the + screw head, such that it seats in there really snuggly before you try to extract/remove it.
Is that a commonly used term; "plus" for phillips heads and "minus" for blade heads? What this does is to reform, just enough, the slots to improve grip on the screw head.