Piece of hard plastic between no. 2 cilinder and engine tin, How can I best remove it? Options

[Marcel Aircooled]

When checking my spark plugs I found a loose piece of hard plastic inbetween the no. 2 cilinder and the engine tin. It turns out to be one of the alternator inspection covers. I have no idea how it got there and unfortunately it is just too big to fit through the spark plug hole in the engine tin so I cannot get it out of there. I found the plastic piece a year ago and only just recently found out it is one of the inspection covers and it does not seem to do any harm where it is now but it just bugs me knowing it is there. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get it out from under the engine tin without removing the engine? Would it be easy to remove the engine tin only where the plastic piece is located? Or any suggestions how to break or bend the plastic piece?

Here's a picture (sorry for the poor quality) of the piece seen through the spark plug hole


This is an example picture of the part I am talking about

[Dave_Darling]

The worst thing it is doing is very slightly affecting the air flow to part of one of your cylinders. Probably not enough to notice in the long term. It might make a little noise as well, but unlikely you would hear it over all the rest of the noise the engine makes.

Removing the engine tin with the engine in the car is possible, but a huge pain. There's a lot of stuff you have to get out of the way first--basically everything on top of the engine on that side. And even then, space in the engine bay is tight to move that large piece of tin around. I don't think it's worth bothering with until you have to pull the motor for some other reason.

--DD