pmohr

iTrader: (26)

Do it just like the FSM says, and you won't have any problems. Just RTV the corners of the valve cover gaskets, all you need.

bigjaysmax95

in regards to replacement of the VC gaskets, the most common leaky VC is the Front? no..My leak has been slow for the last 4-6 months or so. But looking to replace the VC and other maintenance while i have the UIM apart.

may do the front VC myself but have a mechanic do the rear VC..

Someone should make a tutorial on this ! would be very helpful...

williamhood

Wow - this has been a real pill! Having the FSM and the Haynes manual helped a bunch in replacing the front and rear VC gaskets. I had to remove the upper intake of course and it was pretty dirty. My car has been running fine, had no codes, got great gas mileage and excellent idling so I had not planned on really doing much more than replacing the oil leaking VC gaskets. I used the Fel-Pro kit and it seems to be well made. Anyway, while I took my time to take the whole top of my engine apart (moving/removing items in order to get access to what I had to remove), I found that my EGR guide tube and intake manifold port was almost completely stopped up with carbon. At this point I totally disassembled the IACV and fully cleaned it out (see other posts on how to do this), the throttle body (same thing) and the inside to the upper intake manifold. By far the worst was the EGR carbon carp. It was clear that the intake and the EGR tube had never been off my car before in 10 years. I removed it and cleaned the tube and the temperature sensor attached to the tube. The intake manifold port was the worst part and I had to use a chisel (carefully) to fully remove all the carbon. At the same time, I replaced my gas filter, PVC valve (was not plugged up but was cheap to replace anyway), the upper intake manifold gasket, the IACV gasket, the EGR valve gaskets, the throttle body gasket and of course the valve cover gaskets and related spark plug tube gaskets. I only had a few hours a night to work on this and all told it took me two weeks (actual time was like 12-14 hours including all the cleaning time, plus I had to order and receive some gaskets from the stealer and Adv. Auto). I'm pretty out of shape and what took me so long was my back hurting being bent over so much (I'm 6'2") and taking breaks. I went through about 8 cans of throttle body cleaner to do all the cleaning I needed to do and my total project cost was about $150. After I got all this back together and fired it up all went very well. The car runs as good as before with no codes being generated. If you undertake this process, give yourself lots of time, space and spousal patience.

Last notes: I realized I made a stupid mistake in all of this and we'll just have to see how much this bites me in the the butt. I did not take the FSM or the other members excellent advise and use RTV in the corners of the VC gaskets. In looking at how this was make and statements on the Fel-Pro box, I assumed that enough bolt pressure on this area was good enough to prevent leaks after several hot/cold cycles. My front VC is slightly seeping at this point. Rear one is not (yet). If it really only is on the front VC, I may just pull this one off again (before the gaskets go through to many cycles) and use the RTV (after a good cleaning in that area - no oil can be present). I really don't want to have to buy another set of gaskets if I don't have to but I may have to to fix this. My point: if you are going to go through all the hassle to remove the intake manifold to fix the rear VC, then don't get sloppy like I did and just use the right amount of RTV like the FSM says. Learn from my mistake! I didn't even have to buy the RTV, I had a fairly new tube of it to use. This was a dumb/amateurish choice on my part so be smart and don't leave this step out!

BlackMamba

iTrader: (1)

I bought mine with 80K+ and around 90K+ it killed my coil on the center cylinder
the one on top of the manifold, so i replaced the seals and the coil, now at 156K
it did it again, just today i checked the spark plug and it was almost half an inch
full of oil on the cavity, i guess its common.