Questions about pulling off intake manifold - 2002 Windstar 3.8

[scubacat]

Recently cleaned EGR ports, changed upper plenum seals, and installed new felpro green grommets on the plenum bolts so they're already fine. I took off the upper plenum (to clean egr ports, etc.) without any difficulty. However now I have an oil-in-coolant problem so I'd like to pull off the intake manifold to change out the lower gaskets. I'm wondering:

1. What is the best way to take off the fuel rail? I've seen people pull it off with the injectors still in it and just bungee-cord it off to the side. Do I have to depressurize the fuel system first?

2. Do I have to do anything when reinstalling the fuel rail/fuel injectors? Change any o-rings, etc?

3. What else am I missing?

Thanks to anyone who can help. I'm 90% of the way there - just want to make sure I can do this without breaking anything else in the process. I'm off to the dealer to pick up the gaskets today and I'll see if they have the correct sealant for the corners.

[mark_gober]

Originally Posted by scubacat

Recently cleaned EGR ports, changed upper plenum seals, and installed new felpro green grommets on the plenum bolts so they're already fine. I took off the upper plenum (to clean egr ports, etc.) without any difficulty. However now I have an oil-in-coolant problem so I'd like to pull off the intake manifold to change out the lower gaskets. I'm wondering:

1. What is the best way to take off the fuel rail? I've seen people pull it off with the injectors still in it and just bungee-cord it off to the side. Do I have to depressurize the fuel system first?

2. Do I have to do anything when reinstalling the fuel rail/fuel injectors? Change any o-rings, etc?

3. What else am I missing?

Thanks to anyone who can help. I'm 90% of the way there - just want to make sure I can do this without breaking anything else in the process. I'm off to the dealer to pick up the gaskets today and I'll see if they have the correct sealant for the corners.

This is a pretty straight forward deal. The fuel rails are held in place by 4 (or 6, I can't remember) screws. They screw directly into the intake manifold. Just remove those screws, and lift the rails up. It may take some light rocking or back and forth, but it should come right up. I removed my fuel line going to the rails, but I don't believe its required. If you don't remove it, the rail assy. will just flip over toward the passenger side. You can replace the o-rings, but it's not required. They can be purchased from rockauto or you can check with your local store. The problem with replacing the o-rings is that you need a dental pick to pry them out.

When you are done doing what you need to do, just push the injectors back into their hole. One caveat here is to take a shop vac and clean around every injector BEFORE you pull them out. Mine had tons of small particulate matter like dead bugs around them.

Good luck.

Mark

[scubacat]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I don't have to depressurize the system at all. I'll just flip it up to the side and bungee it to the hood; that should do the trick. I have all the parts today so I'm ready to go next time I get an afternoon off.

Looking forward to having GREEN coolant in the overflow reservoir (and not brown, oily coolant.)

[scubacat]

Thanks again for the help. I completed the job Thursday night and everything looks great. Of course, the one thing I forgot to reconnect was the vacuum line for the brake booster so that made my first trip up the road rather interesting, but beyond that everything was fine. That weird heater hose connection is really annoying. The "quick connect" takes about 10x as long to connect/disconnect as a simple hose clamp. Nice piece of engineering there.

I still can't figure out why this gasket would cause oil to seep into the cooling system like that but so be it. Maybe, even though it looked ok, it was somehow seeping past the little seal along the bottom edge into the coolant port. I should've posted a picture of the new gasket .... the new gasket for the 2002 model actually had separate rings around each port instead of sharing a common link between them (make sense?) and then another seal around the entire thing.

I used to hear what sounded like a very tiny vacuum leak when I'd first crank up the engine and that's gone now too.