My wifes car has an oil leak somewhere around the top right of the engine. It's rather dirty (there's no where near me that does steam cleaning - grr!), but I thought it was coming from the cam cover so I had that off and reassembled with Hermitite Red. No joy, still got the leak.

Looking more closely, I now think it's leaking from the cam carrier to head joint. I tried torque checking all the carrier bolts (in the correct order) and one or two turned a fraction but nothing more.

So, it looks like I've got to remove the cam carrier and re-seal the joint. We've already had the belt changed (2 years ago) along with the tensioner and water pump.

The Haynes only lists instructions for removing the cams altogether which obviously entails lots of dismantling and removal of the belt.

Looking at the pictures and at the engine itself, it looks like I should be able to remove the cam carrier without removing the belt and upsetting timing. the only two barriers I can see are:
# the tensioner will need to be released to allow the cams to sit across the followers
# whether the carrier will go back on over the cam seals, which won't be disturbed.
I can tiewrap the belt to all the pulleys to maintain timing I believe.

this should allow me to remove the carrier and replace it sealing the interface as I do so.

Although I know a fair bit about the K series, I've never actually had to dismantle one before, so this is new territory. So I ask the assembled genius of HJ Land for any thoughts on this proceedure.