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Intake manifold gasket.....start over???

2K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  ChevyBelly 
Re: Intake gasket

I did mine about a year ago. I was putting lifters into an 87 truck engine (350) I got for nada from my neighbor who needed some garage space. It ended up in my 77 4 door Nova last May. ( anyone need a 230 6 cylinder?) I think I used the blue fellpro gaskets which had arrows marking where they sit front or back of the engine so you dont accidentally put them on upside down or reversed from left to right. I cleaned all the surfaces and layed a towell in the valley to catch any rtv or gasket shaveings. I used a 1/4 inch bead of rtv on the front and back edges of the valley and used painters tape on the gasket tabs to hold the gaskets in place. It went on dry - no sealer. This was what the instructions said to do as there was a blue bead on the gasket which outlined all of the ports. I used black rtv on all of the mounting bolts since it looked like they had sealer or something on them when they came out. Before you remove the intake, remove the distributor cap and the plug from number one cylinder - drivers side closest to the front. Turn the crank until the timeing mark on the harmonic balancer hits top dead center on your timeing indicator. Have a buddy put his thumb on the plug hole. It should push air much harder on the compression stroke and hiss past his thumb when you reach TDC. If you arent feeling it you are on the exhaust stroke and the rotor is probobly pointing 180 degrees away from number one, turn the crank another revolution to TDC. Now you should be there. Take a picture of where the rotor is pointing - It should be pointing at number one on the cap. Be sure to re-install the distributer exactly the same way or you may have a spark problem for sure. After tapeing the gaskets in place and applying a bead of black RTV to the valley ends, I waited 10-15 minutes. Then carefully lined up the intake and set it straight down into place. Then started all of the bolts and then torqued in sequence to the spec. I forget the order but if you have a chilton book you can find it there. No leakage so far. I did recheck the bolts torque after I ran it for a bit. Do a good job and take your time. The guys at the marina who did my chevys in my boat did not and I had an air leak which robbed me of power and fuel economy for a year before I noticed 3 of the intake bolts were not torqued correctly. I figure it cost me about 4-5 gallons of fuel per trip out on lake michigan as I had to give more throttle to reach the same rpm as the other motor.
 
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