Did my UIM gasket tonight. Did I waste my time??

[guitarfish]

A month ago I did the helacious upper and lower intake manifold gaskets on my son’s 97 GT (which we ended up trading in two weeks ago, for lots of other reasons). At that time, I examined my ’02 GP closely, which has 159K miles. On the driver side rear of the engine, I saw some orange collected in that little 1” pool area in the lower intake, and I said, “Uh oh.” There was no evidence of coolant/oil mix in the rad or the oil cap, but I decided to get right on it and replace my UIM gasket.

Tonight I tore it down. (Whoever designed that black throttle body support bracket should be given subjected to extreme forms of physical torment… but I digress). OK, I finally get the plenum off, and I see orange collected around the throttle body side, which is what I expected to see.

However, as I get closer, I realize it’s NOT Dexcool. No, but it’s some kind of rubbery gasket sealant. Yessiree!! Despite being told over and over “DO NOT USE GASKET SEALANT” by GM, and Felpro, the boys at GM used some over there! It gets worse. I realized that what I saw on the outside of the engine was NOT Dexcool either – it was this goop they used, some of it had dripped down into that collection area.

There I stand, car all apart, and I realize not only DIDN’T I have a problem in the first place, but now, I probably will end up with a car more likely to leak in the future, since I had to scrape off the goopy stuff, and I put it back together without any sealant.

Three hours of a fair share of cussing, cuts, scrapes, and my back is killing me. We DIY’ers live for this don’t we?

COMMENTS? I’m pretty daggone mad about all this.

[wlkjr]

If you cleaned it up and put new gaskets on, then you should be good for another 200,000 miles. At least now you have peace of mind.

[guitarfish]

True. I cleaned it off with a razer, dried it, and reassembled. I used the Felpro gasket. It should last longer than the car itself at this point.

[wlkjr]

I used the Felpro gaskets also and I removed the original stovepipe and put in a new one of a smaller diameter, although my plenum was not damaged around the stovepipe area. Aside from the horse incident, mine is running as good as ever at 323,000 miles.

[guitarfish]

Yeah, I read about the horse. WOW. Is that the original tranny with all those miles too? I guess there's hope for my '98 with 219,000.