Update, Spent a long over due day with my car this past Sunday, had a long list of items to get through, Oil filter housing gaskets needed to be changed, since the manifold was coming off I took the opportunity to clean the Intake ports as a diy, new spark plugs (NGK 5992) and swopped the HPFP with another to troubleshoot something I saw in the jb4 logs,
The Oil filter housing was tackled first by stripping the cowls, air snorkel and DCI’s, 2 water pipes and the oil cooler pipes removed, ER CP and Throttle body fully removed next, then loosening the manifold bolts and nuts and try to unclip this annoying junction box under the manifold. Once that was done proceed to remove the manifold, be careful with any ancillary wiring and piping that might catch the manifold as you remove it. Then it was the turn of the E-torx bolts around the housing and the one poorly positioned under the manifold area. Once that’s out the OFH just lifts out.
That was placed into a container to drip the oil out before going to soak and wash in degreaser. The OFH is 2 parts bolted together and then mounted onto the side of the block. Wash, clean and prepare all the surfaces for new gaskets before mating. Once the OFH was closed up and torqued to spec the attention turned to the intake manifold. It has on it a little nipple that’s used as a boost reference for the DV/BOV and is probably 3mm in diameter and made of thin plastic. This nipple has a bad habit of breaking of after getting brittle, it is also the cause of turbo flutter when used in more than stock boost applications.
I am using an ER charge pipe with a TIAL Bov and TIAL recommend using a minimum ¼ inch diameter line to keep the bov responding fast enough and not creating any surge. So the tiny reference was ground of with a Dremel tool then a 4mm pilot hole tapped into the manifold, this was followed up by an 8mm bit to widen it. A 1/8npt tap was then used to cut threads into the hard plastic manifold. Once the brass fitting could screw in and out fully a little bit of Pratley quickset was mixed onto the threads and the fitting screwed in tightly. Because of the NPT thread pitch from the tap and the fitting, the brass fitting went in tight and was dressed with the remainder Pratley around the base. This was left to dry.
Next up was the intake ports and boy was it dirty. 100k km of use and it can build up quite a bit of gunk. Keep in mind I don’t have the same tools that Carbon doctor has to do this so I had to rely on some good old fashioned elbow grease and ingenuity. As my luck would have it the car had 5 of the 6 cylinders closed. I tested this with a bit of carb cleaner into each port and they all held tight. My tools for the task was a Dremel with extendable goose neck, some brass wire heads in different shapes, some dental tools including a few types of picks mirrors, a compressor and with blower tool. A can of carb cleaner and lots of rags. Two hour later the first 5 cylinders were completed, the motor was turned over till cylinder 5 sealed tight and the last one was finished. NB. while the end product is nowhere near the Carbon Doctor finish; it was good enough from what it originally looked like till I get an opportunity to get it walnut blasted properly.
The manifold was closed and sealed while the 6 plugs came out for the first start up, this is so any dirt that may have gotten into the cylinder (99% chance nothing didn’t) would have a place to exit out the plug holes. Once done A new set of NGK 5992 iridium plugs were gapped and sent to do duty in the respective positions. The charge pipe and ancillary’s were closed up and a liberal dose of engine degreaser was applied to the engine bay for it wash.
The car was left to idle for about 15 mins after being washed and taken out for a drive and a log or 2 after. All in all a lengthy days work but all so worth it.
Thanks for looking!
