Thank you so much for the pictures. You did a great job! Your engine looks great and super clean!

 

I actually thought of doing similar, but was worried I would bend or damage the pulley in some way. Good to know that would work.

 

Looks really good man, I'm gonna have to do that soon I fear... A week ago, just out of morbid curiosity, I shined my mag-lite into the intake and guess what I saw? Yep. Not too bad of a job though huh?

 

It's a big job, but not too bad overall. It is time consuming, but it only takes a long time because you have to remove so much stuff. Nothing is really difficult to do. If your real careful with everything and pay attention to detail, you shouldn't have any problems. It is pretty straight forward, and there are enough instruction on these forums and others, plus what comes in the kit (at least the kit from APS). I do recommend that you have someone help you. Even with zip ties holding stuff up, you sometimes need another set of hands to hold something back. Also, it is important that you set the intake straight down and not let it move around. This requires you use both hands, so having someone else help here is important. My brother helped me, and I was glad to have his help. He actually just did an intake gasket on his '99 Ranger only a few months ago. He said this was very different then how his was though.

One comment I have on it though is that even though you can repair the plenum belly pan, there is several chances that you can cause a different type of oil leak by messing up the gaskets underneath the belly pan. For example, the direction say that you can cause leaks if you don't use enough gasket maker in the corners, or if you use too much in the corners, or you can leak oil past the pan rails if they don't seat correctly, or if you don't torque the manifold just right, etc... This type of leak wouldn't be great, but I think it is not as bad as the plenum leak though because it will likely result in an external oil leak. That shouldn't hurt performance as long as you keep enough oil in it. The leaky plenum pan definetly hurts performance. I meant to take a picture of how I did the gasket maker in the corners, but I was in a hurry to get the intake back on before the gasket maker set up too much. I realized after I had already set it back on, and I didn't want to remove it at that point.

 

Oh okay... hopefully mine wold hold out enough for a while I can make some money. My trucks got 111K on the stock water pump and timing chain, so I'm gonna try and replace it with a gear drive and a new water pump when I do that, because then I can knock it all out at once. Just need the $$$. Good job though, very informative.

 

As your leak worsens, so might your fuel mileage. I was down to 8 mpg right before I changed it (normal was 12-13). I was also needing to add a bottle or two of octane booster (in addition to 91 octane fuel) to prevent the truck from pinging. It didn't start out like that but go progressively worse as the plenum leak got worse. Of course, the messed up rotor I mentioned earlier probably wasn't helping things either, and I also run some mods that make pinging easier (timing advanced with my PCM flash for example).

 

I am glad it went well.
Even with the busted knuckles
and the extra hours
it is always good to look back and say
'I did that and now it works!"

 

Wow! 8 mpg!!! Maybe mine isn't really bad then because I still get 13 if I baby it and run Super. But if I drive it like I like to then I'm looking at 11.5 mpg.

Seems like I was getting 15 on the highway a month ago though. My problem is I foul the plugs every time I run low on gas or if I put in new plugs, they foul within 1,500 miles.

 

Damn, I'm really wondering how this looks when you put the correct bead down. Steve's write-up does have the picture either. You used Ultra Black, right? I would like to know precisely where this RTV goes.

 

No, I used The Right Stuff as directed by the install kit. Sorry I didn't get a picture of that.