Taking a break. Been at it for about 6 hours, and have everything removed, and the new intake installed. Just buttoning up all the sensors, coolant hoses, and ignition stuff, alternator, compressor, valve covers, etc.. The hardest part in my opinion was reaching all the bolts. I did not remove the fan and shroud like Steve did. Also, the front left bolt on the intake itself twisted off with almost no pressure at all. Once the intake was removed, I could tell that the manifold/head gasket had failed at the water jacket that runs right next to that bolt. So it had been swimming in coolant for who knows how long. Probably would have been an even worse problem later on if I hadn't done this repair now. Could have had a leak of coolant into the cylinder or into the lifter valley. Luckily, I was able to remove the rest of the bolt from the head with out much trouble.

Here's a couple of pics. Sorry about the poor quality, the flash doesn't work on the only digital camera I could find in the house, so I had to put a light on everything to take a picture.

The first one is with the old intake still on. Just wanted you to look at the header on ther driver side, you can see how it is blown out in the center where the primaries come together (I mentioned it in another thread). Will be looking for new headers next.
[IMG]local://upfiles/9095/FEE728B5ED544DBFACBE0E98677A4FCF.jpg[/IMG]

Here is one of the plenum pan after it was removed. You can see how it had leaked, and oil is pooled over on the left side. Not as bad as some i've seen, but enough to be a problem. The inside of the intake itself was coated with oil too.
[IMG]local://upfiles/9095/793BBB3741DB46EC86952FA61156298D.jpg[/IMG]

Here is a couple with the new modded kegger installed, and this is where I am at as of right now. I might try to keep working on it tonight, but it is snowing out, and it is about 10 degrees, so even with the garage door shut, it is very cold in there (wish I had a heated garage). I'll post more tomorrow as I finish up and homefully it is fixed and runs good. If it doesn't i'm not looking forward to tearing it down again to figure out what went wrong.

[IMG]local://upfiles/9095/44A151297D854E59879DAF2A0EAB6051.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]local://upfiles/9095/C09AA4CF56AA4DAC9A5A3FBD644E9A77.jpg[/IMG]

 

nice man, maybe i missed it but why you have no wires and the valve covers off?

 

To show off my 1.7s.

Just kidding, the Mopar valve covers have a wider base at the bottom then the stock covers. Leaving them on can cause you probems when you try to pull the intake and when you have to install the gaskets that go on each side of the intake. Plus, I wanted to see how my 1.7's looked since they've been in for about 1.5 years now. I also wanted to recheck the torque on the rockers (they were all perfect). Lastly, I needed to install new baffles in the Mopar Performance covers. The stock ones suck and you get oil leaks out of the rubber grommets. APS sells a baffle set that eliminates that.

The wires are off becuae I am replacing them along with a new cap and rotor. I had a burned wire on the driver side where it fell onto the header, so I just bought a new set of wires. Doing the cap and rotor because it is so easy to get to while you are doing this repair.

 

+ 1 looks good man, I also agree with the tune up while doing the plenum, I would like to strangle the engineer who thought to put the distributor back there, and have firewall stick out 1 foot over the motor

 

+ 2 Looks sweet. The roller rockers look awesome as well. I'm just waiting for my water pump to go, and then build things up while she's already tore down. Glad it all worked out for ya!

pcfixepro

 

I'm sorry to appear new, but I am to repairs. I've had my RAM for 10 years with very few problems.
I have heard about the "plenum repair" here in the forum, but I don't know what the problem is with it.
Also, what is the "kegger" that I also read about.
I'm sure it's different than the Kegger I would prefer...with a mug!

 

The plenumrepair is due to the different metals used for the intake system. The intake is aluminum and a pan that bolts to the bottom of it, seperating it from the valley in the block, is stamped steel. The two expand and contract at different rates causingthe gasket between the two to fail, thus allowing oil from the valley to enter the intake. If you have severe oil loss, and no visable leak - most likely your plenum.

The "kegger" is your intake manifold. And no... it is not nice and frosty!!

Hope this clears things up for you.

 

Welcome to DF Gene... the plenum is a common problem... mainly because of the type of gasket used on the earlier intakes. Mopar changed the gasket to a new metal type but I've personally had 2 of them leak on me. The felpro gasket is the one to get.

Reid!!! Nice looking manifold. where are the pics with the cuts to it?

 

I'll put them all in a seperate thread later. Need to spend my time getting the intake installed first.

 

what did you end up doing to it? cut wise... 1.0, 1.25 1.5???