Before you start, remember to disconnect your battery. The first thing to do is to remove the air ducts and fuel rail. Before you loosen and remove the four bolts on the top of the fuel rails, remove the fuel lines first using the 7/16" and 3/8" nylon fuel line release tool. That's probably the worst part. Note: My GM fuel line disconnect kit came with the sizes 7/16" and 3/8". One person said his kit didn't come with those sizes, and instead used 1/2" and 5/16" tools, which worked too, and may actually be the exact correct sizes. As long as you're within 1/16" it should work fine. I had to peel back the rubber cap on the fuel connector to get the tool inside it far enough. Be patient, it'll come eventually.

Incidentally, now that you have the fuel rail off the car, this would be a good time to change out to a new set of injectors. At the very least inspect all the pintles and make sure they're clean on the ends and free from gunk. I had one that looked like it might have had a little dirt on it so I give it a good spraying with the Carb & Choke cleaner. Removing the injectors is easy - just slide the clip over and pull it out of the rail. To put it back in the rail, smear a little oil around the rubber ring before inserting back in, and it'll go in real easy. You'll want to do this anyway to the ends that go back into the intake manifold so that it will all assemble easy later on.

Remove the four bolts from the front and gently pry with a large screwdriver. Once you get it loose, remove the coolant lines. Incidentally I took this opportunity to do the throttle body coolant by-pass on mine. Simply connect the long hose to the steel line and discard the little 3" piece of hose. You'll see what I mean when you get there.

After removing all the bolts, I took a small pry-bar and gently pried from the front left corner until it came loose. Be careful not to mar or dent the soft aluminum heads or manifold. There is a "pry-point," or place that's specifically made to pry against in the front of the manifold, on the passenger side at the front of the engine. The intake manifold overlaps there quite a bit, and there is a large "nub" in the block casting that you can set the pry bar against. Prying from here makes it easy to break the seal and remove the manifold. Yours may be stuck on pretty good so be patient and keep working on it. It'll come eventually. 

Note: Resist the urge to jam a screwdriver between block and the manifold to pry with!! This will surely damage the softer aluminum manifold, and possibly the block deck as well. Use the pry points only.

from Ken: "After removal of the intake, check the rear of the manifold for any discoloration on the left rear corner that would indicate excessive heat exposure. If you find it, it does no harm to have it there, it just "confirms" the culprit. Next. Thoroughly inspect the mounting surface of the intake all the way around. Many of the intakes received bad casting and must be replaced. They will never give a good "seat" to prevent the leak.  Now, insure that the mating surfaces of the intake and engine are completely clean and dry. Use rubbing alcohol...it even helps to slightly score the surface if you can...use a 100 grit wet sand paper...clean it up real good. Add the cork gasket to the sides and then apply the sealant on the front and back...a nice uniform rope type bead. No matter what that little tube says about "assemble right away", that stuff is just too runny to do that...let it sit for up to 20 minutes or so and "gel" slightly. Put the intake back on, straight down! If you lay it on and slide it at all, you're going to end up pushing some sealant off..."

Speaking of sealant, for my repair I used Permatex Ultra Copper. This has a heat rating of 700 degrees and is O2 sensor safe. Since this is much thicker then the GM stuff Ken is referring to, which is actually pretty thin, I assembled shortly after applying it. I have it on good authority from a mechanic that the Ultra Copper is about the best stuff you can get. It seals VERY well.

I'll add a little trick of my own here... when I put the intake manifold back on, I took a new pencil and cut two approx. 3 inch pieces from it. (It's all I had!) I inserted one in the very first bolt hole on the passenger side, and one in the very last bolt hole on the same side. These acted as guides and made it real easy for me to get the manifold on and perfectly square the first time with no movement what-so-ever. See picture to the right. Be careful though - you can break the pencil off if you hit hard with the corner of the manifold. It would probably be better to use something metal, like a couple old pushrods or something. I only used the pencil parts since that's all I had present.

Important Note:  When I bought the gaskets, the parts guy told me this was a "dry" gasket and you don't have to put anything on it. Unfortunately against my better judgment, I believed him.... and wound up doing this fix a second time. There is a bead that goes around all the ports that's in the gasket, but that will not hold. Remember that the aluminum manifold "moves" around a little due to warming up and cooling down. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking this will hold. I've seen this seeping manifold/intake port leak a dozen times. This is different then the external leak this article addresses.  A month or so later I found myself doing this again as it was leaking oil internally between the ports. This may not be so bad on a normally aspirated car, but the supercharger adds some additional stresses on mine. This may be why mine started leaking so quickly. The outside, (infamous intake leak) was perfect however. This leak between the ports can cause "fuel contamination" which effectively lowers your octane and causes your engine to detonate more frequently, as well as foul spark plugs or keep them on the edge of functionality. While you have your manifold off, run your finger down into the ports on the heads. Do you feel an oily film? If you do, yours has been leaking. Those ports should be clean and completely dry, not oily.

I talked to a friend who is an ASE Certified Master Mechanic and he is the one who suggested that I coat the gaskets to prevent them from leaking. When I redid the gaskets the second time, I used my finger and smeared a very thin layer of RTV along all the bead seals. Ideally, you would want a pin-sized bead around the ports. (Very small amount.) Or better yet, as someone else had suggested, use the spray on sealant. Mine has held great every since.

from Ken:   "Torque the bolts down from the inside out (most of us know that, well....we should anyway). And do it in 10 to 15 foot pound increments. Not the full 35 all at once!  After all is well and good, don't let anyone run the engine. That dern sealant tube says "to accelerate cure time, let engine idle for 15 minutes"....NO NO NO!!! Let her sit for at least 24 hours to get a good cure before the engine is even started. Resist the temptation to start the engine even if you just want to see if everything is hooked up ok. As a final precaution, vent the crankcase to relieve some of that pressure. You can buy an inexpensive breather from L&G Motorsports, RK Sports, or any of those places. They come with a neck that screws into the valve cover where your oil fill cap is and then the neat little breather pops right on top of it. Well, that's it....you're ready to rock 'n roll....no more gunky under carriage!

The only part where I differ a little in the above text from Ken is on the valve cover breather area. If you vent the crankcase via the valve cover, you might have an  affect on the way your PCV system works. The more I think about how the PCV system works, the more I dislike this idea. Just remember that the air that is brought in through the valve cover the way the engineers designed it, is air that has been metered by your MAF, and drawn into the intake manifold. Pulling air from outside a normally closed system might have an affect on how your car runs by drawing air into the intake that has not been metered by the MAF.

Remember - when you reattach the EGR tube back onto the intake manifold, make sure it stays as far away from the manifold as possible, and/or wrap it with header or heat tape. Mine appeared to be adequately spaced from the block and showed no signs of heat problems, so I did not wrap it. Make sure that the EGR tube gasket is in place when you reattach the pipe.

Believe me, it was HARD to let the car sit for 18 - 24 hours after it was all assembled. It does indeed run better. The most time consuming part in this was cleaning all that gasket material off and making sure all surfaces were very clean and dry. Good luck with your fix!

It's a good idea to re-check the bolts after a week or so to make sure they haven't loosened up on you. If you use the Locktite though, this shouldn't be a problem.

 Author: Kelly Drown    Last updated: 12/19/99