Lower Intake Manifold Success Story

Hi All,

Just wanted to post a success story here for those of you who are
having a dilemma with #5 spark plug fouling, pinging on acceleration,
lack of power, oil burning, anti-freeze burning and all other sorts of
engine problems. I changed out my upper and more importantly, lower
intake manifold gasket and my 1994 Explorer has never run better. It
took me about 5 hours to rip it all apart, 2 hours to clean everything
up real nice and 4 hours to bolt everything back together.

The truck has never run better. Tons of pick-up and power. No more
annoying pinging on the highway either. The only real snag that I ran
into was that when I removed the EGR valve manifold tube, it was so
rotten that it broke off at the exhaust manifold. It cost about $170
Canadian to buy a new one from Ford. (there's no after-market part for
this). I'm now wondering that since it was so rotten if this didn't
affect some of my performance problems.

Anyway, just in case anyone had any doubt about trying this themselves,
all it takes is a little bit of time and patience to clean all the
parts properly. You'll also need valve cover gaskets to do this job as
they bolt over the lower intake manifold. I'll be taking the upper
intake manifold off sometime next week to gain access to the lower
intake manifold bolts to retourque them to specs. I've got a feeling
they'll have loosened off a little due to the new gasket. I also plan
to retourque them every year or two to ensure they stay snug and don't
start leaking on me, a real problem with this vehicle. That's about
it. Good luck to anyone who wants to give it a try.