Since we have had the truck (February 2000), it has used a little oil and antifreeze. This slowly got worse, and I finally decided to do something about it. It was obviously leaking around the intake manifold, and oil and antifreeze coated the bottom of the block.
The first thing I did was a little research on the web. It appears that many GM V-8 and V-6 engines have problems with the intake gasket sealing, and leaking antifreeze into the oil. This causes major problems with bearings on both the crankshaft and camshaft. GM changed gaskets, but the problem appears to persist.
In my case, virtually every intake runner has traces of oil or antifreeze being pulled into the engine. GM does not offer any extended warranty on this, from what I can tell. Cost to have the gasket replaced at the dealer is $400 - $600, depending on vehicle.
If you have a GM vehicle (or any for that matter), with a Vee engine, that uses oil or antifreeze, find out where it is going before it does damage. A new engine would have cost me $2,500, installed!
The vehicle has 116,000 miles on it, and there was no oil sludge visible. It has been fed a steady diet of Mobil1 Synthetic oil.
Removing the intake requires removing the distributor, which disturbs the ignition timing. You have two problems to deal with:
Getting the distributor back in the same groove. There are about 16 teeth down there it will try to grab, and you have to get it on the correct tooth. To do this, you mark it before hand. If you still need to align it, manually rotate the engine over with a wrench, until the groove in the pulley lines up exactly with the timing mark. Then get your GM manual out, and find how the distributor should point, and see how far you are off. To get the oil pump to rotate, you can lift the distributor up to clear the cam teeth, rotate it about 1", and drop it back down. I walked the oil pump around in maybe a minute this way. Much easier than trying to line it up with a screw driver, especially since I can't get my head above the hole!!
Some other fine points: GM has so much wire, vacuum lines, and junk running around, you can barely see the intake manifold, much less remove it. The coolant connection to the heater comes from the back of the manifold, and uses a quick disconnect fitting with a hard pipe. You may need a new one - they tend to leak after much movement. The hard pipes on the gas lines don't flex enough to remove them from the TBI (Throttle Body fuel Injection). I ended up removing the TBI unit to remove one of the lines. The distributor hold down bolt is almost impossible to get at, even with a wrench. Maybe you have a better wrench than AutoZone has!
This is after removing the air filter and top radiator hose!
Here we see the knuckle buster distributor hold down bolt, steel, inflexible, gas lines, and coolant connector that leaked.
Other goodies:
I still need to replace the front rotors, as they are warped - again...(Brakes are too small for a 6,000 pound vehicle)
Need to have the ABS looked at - unfortunately, some of these Kelsey-Hayes units don't always work...
Rotate the tires - at 100 pounds each, they are heavy - but the wife won't let the tire shop do it, as they always knock the weights off.
adnj22@morrisbsg.com |
Last Updated on: 06/05/03
