Resealing Lower Intake Manifold

The coolant leak at the rear of the intake manifold decided to make a comeback, and with the cooler weather rolling in, it felt like the perfect time to finally deal with it. I started picking up parts with my usual mindset: if I’m touching it, I’m replacing it. But I’ll admit—reality checked me when I saw the final cost. So I scaled it back to the essentials: new gaskets, some heat wrap for the busted wiring shields, a knock sensor wire, and a rebuild kit for the injectors. And of course, that shortcut came back to bite me.

I kicked off the teardown early one morning. Everything came apart smoothly, and once the intake manifold was off, the problem was clear as day—the gasket was trashed and the valley was full of coolant and grime. Out came the razor blades and Scotch-Brite pads for the slow, knuckle-killing process of cleaning every surface until it was spotless.

While waiting, I pulled the Idle Air Control valve off the throttle body and gave it a deep clean. It was caked with years of gunk and took a serious amount of scrubbing. Naturally, I also destroyed two of the mounting screws and had to source replacements off eBay.