Lower Intake Manifold Removal

[inmaniac]

Hey guys, hope you’re all good.

I have an obnoxious sounding vacuum leak somewhere under my throttle body. It’s very bad and throws out the car terribly, so it’s off the road and I’m addressing ASAP. There is no issue around the TB itself and I don’t see any kind of issue around the fuel rail or injector seats, so I’m assuming it may actually be either the upper plenum gasket, the lower inlet manifold gasket, or perhaps an idle control hose underneath the manifold somewhere. 

To the point of my thread - if I can not locate any obvious leak, I will be pulling off the intake to replace the gaskets. Should I get so far as to pulling off the lower intake, I was just wondering if anyone had tips or advice to share? Specifically regarding how and what to disconnect in regards to coolant hoses, vacuum hoses, etc, and if there are any tricks to any of the bolts?

Ive searched extensively on this topic but most threads only cover the upper plenum and I’m looking for any general helpful tips to removing the whole thing. So far my plan is to remove the TB, the fuel rail, then upper plenum - raise the front of the car up and just see what I can attack from the bottom. Assume that’s the best method?

 

Thanks in advance!

[BIG_FAT_MIKE]

If you're going to replace the upper plenum gasket then you should definitely do the bottom one to. The bottom plenum is actually really straight forward. You just have to fight the awkward angles to get the bottom bolts off. Legit just did this whole job in 2 hours the other week. Take a lot of pictures. It was actually really hard for me to mess up, so don't worry about that. I attacked everything from the top. Never once did I go under the car. And btw, my car was making a god awful whistle noise too. Turned out to be the gaskets. Let me know if I can send you any pictures or anything.