intake gasket advice?

[formula]

So apparently I suck at laying an intake gasket down, judging by the oil leaks on both the front and back of my motor and the coolant in my lifter valley. I just had a thought that i should probably ask you guys for a little advice on how to get a good seal with a small block chevrolet intake gasket between stock iron heads and a performer RPM intake, so that I don't have to redo this a third time.

Judging by the condition of the old gaskets, which i just removed, I was leaking around the center coolant ports and the back the worst.

P.S. the reason that this is in the e-forum is that I'd like to have the car back together by tonight...so any help you guys can offer is much appreciated

[psquare75]

Just a thought, did you use black RTV around the ports? Might help?

[hotroddr]

black rtv around the water passages and instead of the front and back rubber pieces. Gaskacinch or equivalent brush on sticky stuff to seal the rest of the gasket....about 3/16 bead or so for the front and back seals

[formula]

hey cool, I did all of that this time. Last time I just used the gaskacinch and RTV on the back. this time I went crazy with the RTV. So much so that the manifold now sits slightly higher and my air cleaner is rubbing on the hood.

Any ideas on how to make it a leeetle shorter?

[WS6]

you torqued everything down correctly right? i dont see how you could have raised the intake with RTV. if you did manage to youll need to do it over again anyway and remove the excess RTV as you do not want loose peices of RTV going through the engine. thats a good way to stop up the oil pump.

easiest thing to do is simply wipe a little bit around the water ports on both the intake and the head. you dont need much just a thin layer. before you do that though take the intake gaskets and lay them against the head. put the intake in place and make sure the bolt holes are all lined up. now measure the gap that is left between the front of the block and the intake as well as the back of the block and intake. every engine is different thats why its a good idea to do a mock up. you may find yourself working on a pontiac one day or a ford or something that could be different. once you know that then lay your RTV around the water passages and the front and back of the block. let it build up a little in the corners and go up the head just a little as well.(this is also how you should do an oil pan at the front and back corners). lay your gaskets in place and make sure they are lined up with the bolt holes and passages. make sure you have a thin layer of RTV on the intake water passages. if you do, lay the intake down onto the engine. the hard part is that you must lay it down as straight as possible. you do not want to be moving the intake any once you lay in into the RTV. bolt everything up and let it sit. do not crank it immediately. the crankcase area has vacuum present and it could suck the RTV into the engine completely ruining what you just did. give it at least a hour unless its cold, then wait longer. also i would wait til the RTV is dry before you remove the excess that should have squeezed out front eh front and back. just use a razor knife and cut slowly and gently. its purely cosmetic though. oh and if i didnt make it clear when you lay the RTV down on the front and back go a little higher than what the gap was that way it squeezes down when you lay the intake down.

also dont forget to remove any paper towels or rags you should have layed into the valley area to catch any debris before it enters the engine. thats a sucky reason to have to take the intake back off. trust me.

[LowBuckX]

Agreeed.. toss the china wall gaskets and use RTV. Wipe a little around the coolant passages.

The center coolant ports you refer to arent coolant passages at all they are heat riser passages to warm the manifold and should be blocked off unless you run in cold weather or have a exhaust heat opperated choke.
If you are getting oil on top bettween the head and manifold it is most likely wicking up the bolt threads. seal them with some pipe dope or RTV on the treads.

Also save your self the hastle and get FEL-1205 gaskets to start and use the methods given in these posts. .

[formula]

well I got lucky as all getout and did pretty much everything you guys have advised...

-tried to make a fancy little bead around the heat exchange ports, ended up messing up and smoothing it out into a nice smooth thin layer

-eyeballed how thick the old rtv was on the front and the back, and made sure to build it up a little taller than that

-took a break for dinner right after I finished torquing the intake down, letting it sit for a couple hours.

-pulled all the paper towels out for sure- I had a buddy ruin an ls1 that way, so I absolutely made sure I did that.

-are you sure the back intake passages aren't the heat riser passages? My intake came with the back passage blocked off, and I had a nice little coolant leak around one of the center passages from my previous, too-neat-to-seal-properly job.

-I dont know what changed, but my air cleaner's not hitting any more. I guess everything squished down nicely after a while...

[LowBuckX]

Yes the middle are the heat riser (exhaust) and the back are the coolant. On most small block intakes they are blocked.