Well fellas, in an attempt to raise some cash so I can fix my '02 Grand Cherokee (dropped a valve with only 102k miles on it and it's going to at least need a re-manned head and a piston), I have picked up a couple of smallish repair jobs.

Sunday's project is to fix the infamous blown plenum gasket on a 2nd Gen Dak ('98 I believe) with a 5.2 V8. The owner ordered the Hughes kit and it was delivered yesterday.

I looked over the installation instructions online and a couple of Ram DIYs on here and it looks straight forward enough.

Anybody who has done this have any tips over what is on the instructions???

 

Make sure you have some RTV Silicone around, it will come in handy


The installation is very straightforward, old crap off, new crap on. Be sure to torque the plate down to spec's, should be with the Hughe's Instruction's. Be sure when you put the kegger back on to check for any pinched wires on the back side, it happen's....

Are you replacing the PCV Valve? And are you re-using the original intake manifold bolt's?

 

I popped it off today and went ahead and did cap/rotor/wires and PCV at the same time. Talked the guy into it when I saw how easy it was gonna be to get to the dist. cap. In all it took about 4 hours with a lot of BS time and beer breaks.

My hands were a mess and I didn't want to touch my phone, so I only snapped two pics, one of the engine minus the intake and another of the intake after I installed the Hughes plate.

I only made one boo-boo, put the wires on the new cap off one to the right on EVERY damn one! It didn't like that and it was a LOT harder to get to the top of the cap to fix my mistake. But all-in-all it went pretty smooth. I'll post up the pics later...

 

The 5.2 with the intake removed:

IMG222.jpg

and the intake ready to go back in with the Hughes plate on the bottom:

IMG223.jpg

 

Did it come with new intake bolts? My buddy did his and thought he could get away with out them(like 46.00 for them) he torqued the bolts to spec and had a high pitch noise well I guess over time the bolts stretch and you need new ones. This was on a 01 dodge ram 318.

When you have a ram with 5in lift and 35's this is the easiest way to do the plenum gasket.

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I re-used the stock bolts and they torqued up fine. I did my '98 RCSB Ram 5.9 about twelve years ago, but only used a replacement Mopar gasket, if the Hughes existed back then, I wasn't aware of it. Used the stock bolts on mine too and if it didn't hold - it was well after I traded the truck in '02 if it failed...

BTW: for those in this section keeping up, I decided a total rebuild of the 4.7 HO in the Grand Cherokee. Heads have been back - fully remanned at a local shop. I got all 8 cylinders honed this past weekend and I got 5 new pistons installed. Have a regular five day a week job now, for the first time in over four years - so my work time is limited but I hope to get it back on the road in a couple of weeks.

Big job for this old lift kit and bolt-on mod guy. First rebuild on anything more complicated than an inline 6 cylinder - wish me luck!!!

I'm doing a kind of a total 4.7 rebuild over on a Jeep forum, but I'll do a good one up on this forum - probably in our Jeep section when I finish the rebuild...