Yamaha 8 Lower casing cap removal ?

[Mike2309]

Title says it all really.
With bolts removed the cap is still solid ; Bash the lugs to rotate the cap?; lever it off with a screwdriver in the recesses in the lugs? (Don't fancy that much) ; just pull it off - it should not be overly tight if it was assembled correctly with a smear of grease (don't tell me that - it is , so it obviously wasn't}. Any other ideas?

 

[VicS]

gently I think.

Some heat on the gearcase might help.

Some penetrating oil ( eg Plus Gas) might help.

Depending on age there may or may not be an O ring in there.

It'll be easy to break the ears off so be careful levering them

 

[Mike2309]

Still fiddling with the outboard.

Thanks Vic.
Had tried soaking and gentle tapping to no avail. The ears (lugs as I called them) have recesses under them just right for a large screwdriver but I didn't fall for that one - not with the price of a new end cap being sixty-odd quid (not to mention the difficulty of removing the old cap with both ears broken off) But I did wonder if those recesses might be for the engagement of some special tool (they are on opposite sides of the ears as though the end cap might actually be threaded in. I can't tell from the exploded diagram. Is that possible?)
Also, in passing - the water pump - it's a neat little idea, the eccentric placement of the impeller so that there is a sucking side with expanding sectors between the impeller blades, and a squirting side , where they are compressed. But I wonder why there is a very shallow chamber beneath all that where the water enters at one side, flows across and up into the impeller chamber on the other . This lower chamber was, of course, completely choked with salt.
So, any ideas why it should be that way?