I'm about to fix my intake and continue doing maintenance on the truck but I want to share something Im going to do with the gasket.
I say this because I recently learned about this truck's intake plenum gasket taking a dump every so often and if you don't buy a "kit" of some sort it will always go to **** and maybe after you buy this "kit" it might still blow in a few years down the road.

Well why not just use some AVIATION GRADE PERMATEX on the damn plenum and call it the day ?

 

cuz u can get the hughs kit and call it a day. Well i killed that spelling.

 

What are you ranting about?
How will that sealant work better? Does it somehow change Steel into Aluminum?
The problem with our plenum pates is because they are made of Steel. The intake is Aluminum. Steel and Alumium expand at different rates. The "kits" are made of aluminum so they expand and contract the same as the intake.

 

The Hughes (or APS) repair kits replace the thin (crappy) steel plate with a heavy aluminum one. The manifold and plate will now expand at the same rate and the heaver plate allows for a stiffer surface on which to mount the gasket ... permanent fix.

I mean ... yeah, like he said ...

 

that was eazy.

 

has anyone ever tried welding an aluminum plate on it?

 

ya,

people have, its just alot of trouble for most people to weld aluminum...

plus you have to be sure it sealed perfectly, otherwise your in the same situation again

 

I just made this repair yesterday. I took great care to make sure the gasket surface was perfectly clean, used the metal Fel-pro gasket, and put a little Ultra Copper around the bolt holes (per Silver_Dodge :P), and put blue gel threadlocker on the bolts.. The original gasket that was in there was paper. Paper. What the hell.

Anyway, I think this should be good for a long while. After seeing how it's put together, I'm not convinced that RTV alone would hold forever... aircraft grade or not.

 

eh noobs

 

Ok...