kudos to doing your own work!
I just did my intake gaskets this weekend. There were signs of an ever so slightest leak from all 4 ends of the intake. But not enough where I had to add coolant. Also had sludge in the reservoir and at the pressure cap - GM supposedly says that only develops when you let the coolant get low, but my reservoir has never been empty.
All of Saturday, ended the night flushing the coolant after assembling the lower intake, then spent 4 hours on Sunday wrapping things up.
Also a little bit of coolant can leak out when removing the intake. After I was done I did an oil change. Then drove to the store to pick up engine flush, filter, and oil and did a SECOND oil change just to make sure I got the traces of coolant out of the crankcase. Call it insurance, well worth the little extra money.
The one thing i couldnt where does that tiny rubber cap go? it looks like a vacuum hose endcap but i know it was stuck on the end of a protruding bolt somewhere near the throttle body. After I was finished I only had 3 left over parts, and quickly found where they went: throttle body-I took one bolt&nut out but didnt remove it from the intake (i thought the cap went there but it was too loose fitting), the other nut was the coolant bypass pipe bracket running along the engine that bolts to the head.
A tip: even though I bought an injector o-ring kit, I didn't need to take off the fuel rail & injectors. I just left them on there.
Hindsight is 20/20: I should have used my dremel with the *plastic* brush attachemnt for those gaskets. 30,000 rpm and a couple of brushes ought to do the job! I spent a good leisurely 2 hours with the gaskets. Gasket remover helped a little bit. I used a thin foil-type razor blade.
I used a digital camera all the way - take pics of all angles especially the rear of the engine so you know for sure which bolts, wires, etc go and the best way to route wires.
I don't know about felpro gaskets, but the intake set I got from NAPA (Victor Reinz) there are aluminum spacers embedded on each end of the gaskets, presumable to prevent squashing the intake gasket, the original did NOT have those spacers, just an empty hole, where they SHOULD have been. Defective design I think.
All in all, I didn't run into any surprises and have everything I needed beforehand. I had planned on doing this the weekend prior but had the lower egr gasket on order and it rained anyway that weekend. BTW there are two different looking gaskets to the egr, you won't need the tube unless you break it somehow.
When I get home today I'm going to check my bleed screws one more time to make sure all the air is out of the cooling system.
Happy ending: my car started on the first crank also! (I switched it on and off a few time, then hit the fuel system shrader valve to make sure fuel would come out... then tried cranking it. I did forget to connect the plastic connector to the alternator and required a jump the next day because the battery was not charging.