getting major oil loss and marbles in a can noise

 

Yup. Time to pull it and reseal it.

 

Mine blew 40 miles from home while pulling a loaded car trailer. It took me over an hour to get home since I couldn't get over 40 mph. When I did my plenum, I did a major tune up. I left the cylinder heads and exhaust manifolds in place but everything else on top and front of the engine came off. My oil sending unit had had a small leak and explained the quart every 600 miles or so. When the plenum blew it went to a quart ever 50 miles. I also replaced the injectors, cap, rotor, plugs and plug wires, timing chain, water pump (the old one was good but it was off, so why not), as well as the harmonic balancer. That was a surprise as I generally don't replace those but mine was about to come apart. I also had to drill out two broken bolts (I had to helicoil one of them) and I found the tic, tic, tic, I'd had since I got the truck. I found several oil soaked cigarette butts and an old, flattened can of Schlitz beer.

What I planned on taking 2 weeks to fix up ended up taking nearly 3 months. Most of this was waiting on parts, plus doing other stuff. On the other hand, that engine purrs like a new one and the flowmaster 44's make it sound goood! I do have a slight low idle when started cold but I had to make a gasket by hand and suspect I didn't do a good job. I used the Hugh's Engineering plenum kit. I could have just used a new gasket but the old plate looked iffy. Some of the bolts on it were so tight I had to use a long breaker bar. Others I unbolted with my fingers. I suspect the beer can was symptomatic of the previous person to work on it.

 

Is there anyone is the denver area that i could pay to help me with my plenum gasket? Similar to the gentleman above I am blowing through oil. I am just ok mechanically and dont have much of the tools to do it. Ill pay and bring some good beer and whiskey

 

I'd suggest posting this request on a phone app, such as Nextdoor, as you'll likely get more interest and responses there...

 

Got around to pulling the intake manifold off. Gasket doesn’t look blown out or anything.

3 bolts broke off in the head.. only could get 2 out so removed head and took to a machine shop to get it out and resurface it.spent >8 hrs welding, drilling(breaking tons of bits), using extractors(1 of which broke off in the bolt that’s stuck in the head). Just waiting to hear back if they can get it out or not.

I hope I didn’t do all this for nothing…

 

Heads are still available...... and might end up being cheaper than fixing what ya got....

 

When I pulled my intake, it looked okay but the bottom of the plenum was definitely blown out. Someone had been in there before and some of the bolts were (barely) finger tight and other needed a cheater pipe to break them loose. I had to drill one bolt out and use a heli-coil in it. That's why it took 2 1/2 to 3 months instead of the 2 weeks I expected.

 

It might be best to send to a mechanic if you aren't comfortable doing yourself. The hesitation with people willing to help with this is because of similar results of breaking the manifold bolts during teardown. I broke two during my rebuild and a simple job turned into heads in the machine shop for bolt extraction.