3.9 Intake leaking oil
 

Looking down the throttle body I can see a film of oil on the bottom, the intake shown in the picture came from a 96 Dskota that someone had left as scrap at our local landfill. It's now minus a few parts.

After removing the bottom plate from the dump intake it also had a layer of oil on the bottom.

I'm well aware there is an aftermarket aluminium plate that is supposed to fix this problem and If I thought the aluminium plate was the holy grail to keep this oil from recurring I would have the Hutterite Colony laser cut a few dozen of them up and gift them to people.

I think the real problem is the distance between the bolts on the one side of the OEM steel plate that is causing the gasket to fail.

After replacing the gasket I'm going to drill holes in between each bolt hole then tap in a U-drive to better secure the plate to the intake.

Thoughts appreciated.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/dodgefo...98f9f42803.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/dodgefo...d426080977.png

Its the LENGTH of the bolts that was the major issue. (V-8's had the same issue.) Clean it up good, get some shorter bolts, (or, cut the nipple off the end of the factory bolts.) use a GOOD quality gasket, and you are good to go.

How did the engineers miss that, my caliper confirms that the bolts bottom out.

Thanks for the heads up.

Most likely, they ordered a special length bolt, and the bean counters substituted one that was .00001 cents less per bolt, but .001" too long.

What, me cynical about purchasing agents? What EVER gave you THAT idea????

RwP

Somebody didn't take in to account that over time, the gasket would harden, and shrink. Or..... They KNEW it was going to happen, but, so long as it lasted longer than the warranty..... (and gaskets aren't covered after the bumper-to-bumper warrant expires) they let it go.

Currently working on this and while the bolt does in fact bottom, the gap that's left is less than the thickness of the cover so I don't agree that it's the bolt unless someone has gotten bolts that are different from mine...and mine are original to the truck. I think it's more likely that the gasket is just insufficient to the task, after all it's pretty wimpy.

Steve