Yes very slowly turn the crank you dont want to put a bunch of unneeded presure on the piston itself. The nice thing is if it is a softer rope then it will have a bit of give and you wont have to worry about damaging things when you do it. On my 86.5 that is what I did to replce the valve guides and it worked. Added time is the fact of haveing to do one then pull the rope out and move to the next one it more tedious than anything.