After driving the truck a few times I discovered a leaking intake manifold gasket. However it is currently in my friends possesion, he is renting it from me until he can buy a car. So I prepped a spare intake manifold i had laying around so i could go out to his house and swap them. I decided to not put much money in this thing so i reused the oe plenum pan and just cut 1/4" off of the bolts.

After cleaning and prepping the intake manifold I discovered a broken bolt in one of the thermostat housing bolt holes. I soaked it in pb blaster for quite some time and then still broke a easy out off in it. At this point I probably should have said to hell with this manifold but i had already installed the plenum plate with a new gasket and thin layer of RTV on both sides, and it had already set up. So I spent the next 2 hours or so drilling holes around the ez-out until i could remove it. I ended up with a rather large hole by the time i got it removed. Then I drilled a large hole for a helicoil and tapped it. For some reason I didnt trust just the threads so i also jb welded the helicoil into the threads. Thats when i realized that the size of bolt i had to use with the 10 mm helicoil was too big for the bolt head to clear the thermostat housing, so i ran a 8 mm helicoil with jb weld into the 10 mm helicoil and all seemed well. I put about 50 lbs of torque on i and it held.

I wish i had some more pics but got in a hurry.




So we got the old intake off without any issues and in about 1.5 hrs. and cleaned it all up. Lifter valley was clean with no sludge.




Then we got the new one bolted down. Thanks to merc225 for the torque specs.

Everything went well until i bolted down the thermostat housing. I failed to measure the depth of my bolt hole and the length of my bolt, and right when it started to snug up the housing the bolt bottomed out and ripped the helicoil loose. Needless to say i was pissed. We took it back apart and decided to run to town to get some jb weld and try fixing it, that did not work. It leaked like a sift. So we took it apart again and upon further investigation noticed that half the helicoil was still intact. So we measured and cut a bolt just the right length and reinstalled with alot of rtv. I think it will hold this time but wont know for sure until it cures which will be tomorrow.

During all of this though we did start it up, which took quite awhile for some reason, and it seemed to run a whole lot better. The idle came down from 1500 rpm it was before to about 1k rpm and the miss seems to be gone, though we only ran it for about 10 sec. I contribute the 1k rpm to a faulty vacuum line that kept popping off the manifold and no air cleaner installed. So with any luck it will be back up and running smooth tomorrow afternoon. We also did a coolant flush before we started, and changed the oil after we got done. I thought i had more pics to share but i guess i failed in that department, was in a hurry all day with a time crunch and impending rain.

 

That was a painful experience to read about my friend. uggg!!

 

Filled it up with coolant today, not leaking at thermostat housing, but got a pinhole in the radiator now, ugghhh. Idle is bouncing between 900-1200 rpm. I suspect maybe the tps as I have already replaced iac and cleaned the tb.

 

May be a vacuum leak somewhere as well, that IS typical behavior for one.....

 

Yeah ill have to go look at it again, my buddy is messin with it now and it makes me nervous cause hes an idiot. Hes insisting that the timing is off and that its all cause of the ecu.

 

Let me guess, he wants to trun the distributor to change the timing.

 

Yeah he wanted to, I was like nöooooooo! Renting the truck to him has turned out to be a huge headache. I keep getting text from him about it. He was running it at 230 deg. Cause he doesnt know how to burp a cooling system.

 

Better make sure he pays a damage deposit..... and anything he screws up, HE pays to fix.

 

Hes probably twisting the distributor back and forth trying to get it right... Yep.. Ask for money...