heres a pic of inside my intake, does this mean i have a blown plenum gasket

 

yep shes in need of repair

 

id say yes mine looked very similar tothat when i did mine. i wasnt too sure if it truly was blown but once everything was off i could clearly see the blown gasket so i would just fix it.

oh and depending on how you feel i would just hit the valve cover gaskets while you do the job too gonna have it all apart probably the easiest time to do them mine still looked pretty good but i went ahead and did them cause it was very accesible.

 

yea she is in need of some help, trust me you will notice a difference in idle and all. i noticed the stronger better idle as soon as i got it all back together and started her up. but i also did a new pre-cat 02 sensor and a full tune up as well, best time to change the distrubutor cap and rotor.

 

man thats the worst i ever seen it ! ! lol jk . . you will feel better if ya get it done, if you want too do a permant fix do the airgap

 

alright well i plan on doing the plenum gasket intake gaskets cap and rotor and the valve cover gaskets this weekend any tips?

 

How do I "do the airgap?"

 

if you can degrease and powerwash the crap out of your motor last thing you want is somethin fallin in there

 

If you got the cash go for the air gap its a aftermarket intake manifold that eliminates the plenum. Kinda expensive. I would just do the Hughes plenum plate and not worry about it anymore

http://www.hughesengines.com/Index/index.php

also heres mine after cleaned up and back together
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIUGHVjvuyg

 

The airgap is an aftermarket intake manifold that is 1-piece (stock is 2 piece, this is why it has the plenum gasket). It is available from hughesengines.com for around $600 if memory serves. Doing this will fix the plenum problem permanently, but it has a pretty hefty price tag.

Most just get the aluminum plenum plate available from the same site. Swapping to an aluminum plate corrects the reason that the plenum blows frequently on these trucks.

To further elaborate: OEM intake is 2-piece, top is AL, bottom is cast iron, the plenum gasket is in-between. These two metals expand and contract at different rates and temperatures which puts added stress on the gasket.... After a while, the gasket comes to the conclusion that living under this amount of stress is tantamount to eternal torture, at which point it commits suicide.