2000 Blazer lower intake plenum coolant leak

Oh god here we go. I bought my blazer 3 months ago from an independent party (friend of family) so no warranties from a dealer.

OK so a few weeks ago I noticed a coolant smell. After a week and a half of trial and error i traced it to 2 things. #1 bad radiator cap and #2 bad upper radiator hose. I replaced both and it seemed to fix the issue for a couple days. No smell, no puddles under the engine. Now i'm getting a continual dripping under the engine, even after its been off overnight. My best friend who is more engine savvy than I am finally found where the coolant was coming from and running down. The lower intake manifold plenum behind the alternator. :crying:

Now. He is afraid i might have warped heads. The valve covers are dry as a bone all the way around so we're pretty sure its not a blown valve cover gasket. No coolant in the oil at all so we're pretty sure its not the head gasket. Its slowly running from the gasket for the lower intake behind the alternator from what we can see.

So with that said, any other possible ideas? Also, how do I go about fixing it? I do not have enough money to pay a mechanic because I spent every penny I had to buy this truck. Between him and I, we're positive we can fix it if its just the gaskets. He has torque wrenches but I need to know the amount of torque needed on each bolt on the intake and whatever else can be donated to the brain storm to fix this thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated :tongue:

That is a common problem on these engines. Replace the gaskets & you should be good to go. I'm sure the heads are fine.

Replace your intake gasket and you should be good to go, make sure you use Fel-pro gaskets for the repair.

Just to add on, those gaskets are plastic with rubber seals. The plastic cracks and the seals break apart. It's not a terribly hard job, but take your time. DO NOT use any sealants on the intake gasket!! They seal on their own. I just did mine a few months ago with the exact same problem. Don't sweat the warped heads - more than likely they are not. Let us know how it went.

Replace your intake gasket and you should be good to go, make sure you use Fel-pro gaskets for the repair.

As said use the felpro problem solver hard rubber gaskets.

Not the GM or felpro plastic junk gaskets.

And use proper torque on intake.

Set dist as shown in picture and after ir is running you need to put it on a good engine capable scanner and have cam shaft retard set to specs.
http://files.automotiveforums.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=51302

Also in the S-10 how to section there is a good how to do on it.

ok so whats the toque needed for each bolt? I found one forum where someone posted the inch pounds but they didn't explain which bolt needs what torque.

I am going wednesday to get the gaskets and we're working on it friday and saturday. (we're thinking its going to be a 2 day job basically. Its going to be fun since I live in an apartment complex lol.

ok so whats the toque needed for each bolt? I found one forum where someone posted the inch pounds but they didn't explain which bolt needs what torque.

I am going wednesday to get the gaskets and we're working on it friday and saturday. (we're thinking its going to be a 2 day job basically. Its going to be fun since I live in an apartment complex lol.

Torque specs are at the end: http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=879228

I just finished myself, not a bad job...two days should be tons. Most of the work is just getting the stuff out of the way to access the manifold.

Torque specs are at the end: http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=879228

I just finished myself, not a bad job...two days should be tons. Most of the work is just getting the stuff out of the way to access the manifold.


OMG thank you so much. MAJOR HELP! Every step is what we were thinking we would need to do but that gave us some ideas that makes it easier too!

ok well we got done with the reassembly today. it took us a total of 8.5 hours between me, my best friend, and another good friend of mine. This was kind of a first time thing for us. We were not properly equipped with the tools we needed so we had to make a couple extra trips to sears and autozone for things we didn't have.

Everything went smooth after we got the intake cleaned up and the lifter valley cleaned up. Surprisingly enough, the only coolant that got in there was just the residual coolant from the intake because we forgot to drain the coolant but fortunately there was less than 1/2 cup worth that got into the oil. got it drained out, flushed it with 2 quarts of cheapy oil. closed everythign up and dropped in 5qt of MaxLife and we're going to wait until monday to put in coolant and bleed any air pockets in the fuel and coolant lines.

When we were working on the truck, we somehow lost the 2 screws for the distributor cap. They fell down into the back side of the engine and we don't know where they went lol. So i have to go buy another distributor cap. Fortunately my best friend has connections at AutoValue so we get them at cost.

*update*

Ok we gave the RTV 2 days to really cure. We turned the key. She started up and idled for about 10 seconds then died. She was giving us a hard time initially with staying running at idle. The fight with that took about 20 minutes. We had to keep revving it for about 5 min to keep it running. We suspect it was just the MAF sensor being quirky because we didn't have the cold air intake mounted all the way. We fully mounted the cold air return, it ran smooth as silk... smoother than it did before the gasket blew. I've been driving it for 2 days consistently now. I'm very happy with it. It seems to drive better than before. I DO need to get a new cat for it. we're getting a sour exhaust smell and the tachometer kinda slips on occasion (both signs of a bad cat). No big deal. i'm replacing the exhaust with stainless, high flow cat, and flowmaster 44 delta muffler next =D.

As I said in my post earlier, we inadvertently lost the screws to the distributor cap so I just bought a pack of screws with the same thread type but with a hex head and it worked perfect. We didn't set TDC. What we did was mark the position of the distributor with a magic marker before we removed the distributor and positioned it a notch or two counter clockwise back from where it initially was when we reinstalled it just to make sure we didn't need to go through the hassle of finding TDC. =)

Thanks again to everyone for their support and ideas and the link to the post of the walk through.

To anyone who's taking this kind of repair on. GET A SET OF CROWS FEET SOCKETS!! They made life so much easier.