intake gasket water ports?

[heisler0]

Hi! new to forum been looking thru for a while, my son and I are working on 1985 ford ranger 2.8l v6. intake gasket was leaking pretty bad so we are switching over to duraspark ignition and figured we would fix some of the oil leaks. We noticed to two rear water ports in the intake gasket are closed off? Should it be this way or do these need to be cut open?

 

[Uncle Gump]

I'm not an expert on the 2.8... but on other engines they're closed to force the coolant to travel through the cylinder head to the front.

 

[Josh B]

Depends what they're closed off with, mine were almost closed off with gunk!

Ahhh, I see it's in the gasket, that would be factory

 

[heisler0]

Thanks for the responses. I guess I should have rolled the intake over before posting as those ports dont go anywhere so we installed new gasket as is.