Well I went ahead and was going to do my first valve job today. I end up taking of the valve cover only to find that I could not locate the feeler gauges I bought just yesterday. So Frustrating!

But after taking off the valve cover and inspecting things it seems like a relativeley easy task. The one problem I encountered was that when taking off the valve cover there was a lot of tension on the bowden cable. I did disconnect the linkage associated with it, but there was still a lot of tension making it very hard to get clearance from the part to left of the power steering pump (not sure what its called). My question is how do you guys over come this? Is there good way take disconnect the bowden cable from the the assembly attached to the valve cover without having to disconnect everything?

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1983 300SD White with Grey interior