lower intake manifold gasket story.... with a twist...

[TrexMex]

So last saturday, after 2 months of not being able to dive under the hood of my truck (Moved, got married, honey moon, etc... you know, the "usual"), I finally started tearing things apart to put in a new lower intake manifold gasket. I bought this truck last May, and have been finding out the hard way how neglected it was (yeah yeah, sucky buy but I'm getting there, one thing at a time...), anyways, the old gasket -Factory one, btw- showed deterioration on the aft cooling ports, hence my overheating problems, and the grime and carbon deposits accumulated in the plenum, fuel rail and in the manifold were just unbelieveable, took me a whole day of cleaning parts.... so after cleaning EVERYTHING, including testing/cleaning/servicing the fuel injectors, putting everything back together, I started plugging back all the sensors; and here's where the plot thickens....

When trying to re-connect the EGR valve position sensor, I found out the connector was gone I mean, the wires were there, including the metal terminals and such, it was just that the plastic connector dissapeared, maybe from handling the harness from one side to the other to put in the parts, so I spent the next 3 HOURS trying to fiind the connector in every single corner of the engine, which btw drove me to the conclusion I need to get it steam-washed, it's a mess down there .. After giving up at 12am I thought what the hell I connected it like that just to test and will later go to the junkyard to get a "new" one. So I start the engine and first thing I hear is this weird knocking noise coming from one of the cylinders ... So here I am, midnight, finding out the little s@#t found its way down one of the intake ports.... I said phawk it, I let it run 'till it warmed up, and this nice burnt plastic smell starts coming out of the exhaust.. I revved it up and there goes the noise.... I took it for a spin and everything is running great and quiet besides a little bit of high idle, under 1000 but over 600.. cooling system needs to be burped, though, I'll see if that fixes my problem....

I consider myself to be a careful weekend, "will work for beer" mechanic, but I guess stuff like this do happen, even though it's the first time I hear of something like this...

I'm guessing who else has managed to pull a stunt (elegant way of saying I messed up) like this one and get away with it.... ..

Do share!!

 

[SoLongStang9499]

Oh, Oh, i got this one.

Last summer I replaced my intake manifold gasket, as well as a new pushrods and rockers where needed. Got everything torn down everything went quite well actually. Since everything went so fast, i got a little hasty you could say. Got the rocker arm assembly torn off the passenger side, to replace the pushrods. Turns out all were shot, so i began to pull them out 1...2...3..4...5.... went to pull out the 6th one, it had gotten sucked onto the lifter, so i gave a nice little yank, followed by a deathly cling cling clank. Yeah, it really was demoralizing watching a pushrod fall into my motor, right through the heads down into the oil pan. I was there for hours with a borescope, a flash light, and a grabbler trying to get it, it was impossible. So it ended up getting towed to a dealer for them to take the pan off and fetch it. I did get everything back together though, and it ran very nice after they removed the 13th pushrod Long story short, cover the oil holes with rags when working on it. It sucked but you wont see me make that mistake twice. That was a very expensive pushrod too, something slighly under 500 bucks. Its framed in my garage

 

[TrexMex]

Its framed in my garage

Nice!!! too bad I can't frame plastic fumes...

 

[mailboxman]

hey trex mex--what do you mean burping your cooling system?? I am dealing with a high idle and I have seen this mentioned before but dont know how to do it???

 

[TrexMex]

hey trex mex--what do you mean burping your cooling system?? I am dealing with a high idle and I have seen this mentioned before but dont know how to do it???

Basically means that I have air in my cooling system from draining and refilling it and need to get it out (i.e. "burp" it).... You pretty much put your truck on a hill so the rad cap is the highest point in your cooling system, let the engine run with the cap off and wait 'till it warms up so the thermostat opens. Once the coolant level starts getting lower you fill it up again and put the rad cap. It is said that this could help with the INTERMITTENT high idling since if an air pocket hits the temp sensor it will read higher fooling the PCM into revving up the engine...

Now my high idling seems to be getting better after 2 days of driving the truck; I guess the PCM is "re-learning" after being disconnected for 3 days.... My trouble shooting is going to start with cooling system burping and go from there through each of the sensors (checking continuity and resistance). Another suspect is the EGR valve tube, since it is a little loose in the Y-pipe connector (I was lazy and didn't want to take it apart to fix it), the valve could not be getting all the pressure it needs to properly work messing up the PCM idle adjustment; then again, that's just me thinking out loud....

 

[HOUSTEX 4X4]

Hey trexmex I replaced the lower intake manofold gasket with a felpro should I just use a motorcraft ? Reason is that theres oil in my coolant ...my block just got rebuilt with new not remaned heads . What do you think ? Any info is nedded and appreciated ..