Fixing my intake manifold coolant leak and need a quick answer..

[NitrousMan]

I'm in the middle of fixing GM's screw up on the intake manifold coolant leak and I was wondering if anyone else has done it and can you tell me how to remove the ignition coil bracket with the coils like the shop manual says? Do I need to get under the car and unbolt them or do I just need to unbolt the 2 bolts I can see from the top of the motor? Thanks.

[eleveniron]

Don't worry about the lower two. Just do the top two that you can see from the front and then bend the bracket back a bit. Also, don't try to remove both valve covers. Just remove the top two bolts on the rear cover and take out all 4 bolts on the front cover. This will give you plenty of room to lift the manifold out. My valve cover gaskets were still nice and soft so I didn't bother replacing them. I just finished doing the intake manifold gaskets on my 97 trans sport about 4 hours ago. All in all, not too bad of a job. Took me about 12 hours.

Let me know if you have any other questions about the job.

Steve

[NitrousMan]

Thanks for the info. I won't be able to work on it again until next weekend so I'll post then if I have another question. Thanks.

[jbecker906]

I have a 3.4 liter 97 trans sport and I'm in the middle of this process, too. My Chilton's manual is not clear about the several things:

Can someone tell me why I should even have to remove the fuel injectors and rails from the lower manifold. Why not just pull the manifold with the injectors still attached? If I do have to remove the injectors, do I really just pry on the rails to pull the injectors out?

I did remove the back valve cover completely, but can not remove the front valve cover because of this metal coolant line....after removing the one screw on its flange, it still is pretty well stuck in place. Is brute force needed at the flange or am I missing something that is still holding this in place...... or is removal even nesessary since the back cover is off?

Finally, the manual does not show the pattern or torque spec for the 3.4 liter engine. Can someone help? To be clear, the eight bolts can be described as number 1 through 8, left to right, front to back.

thanks,

Jim