ok guys....i wanna get my intake installed, but i never installed an intake before....ive done my shocks, springs, struts, longtubes, x pipe, borla catback, did my timing, did my pulleys.....but ive never done an intake swap....i know ill need gaskets, sealant, coolant jug, new oil, teflon tape....how hard is it to do the swap?? do you guys think i should tackle this by myself or should i get someone to do it for me?
performer intake install advice
- Thread starter 96darkhorse
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Intake Install:
Tear down to everything (removing the upper/lower intake with the injectors/throttle body/intake pipeing/hoses/etc.)...you will want to drain part of your coolant out...and just in case you forgot where some of your intake vacuum lines go I’ll try to jog the memory a bit with a little bit of a description: If your looking at the front of the engine and you look on the upper intake on the front left of it, that line goes to the charcoal canister. The vacuum line just to the right of it (thicker) goes around to a two way valve on the bottom right side of your upper intake and continues on into the back bottom of the lower intake where your pcv valve is located at. On the back of your upper intake you have a little intake tree that comes out of the back of the upper intake. It has three possible hose connections. The thicker one goes to the firewall vaccum tree where it is labeled as “S” (it will be a little up and to the right of the upper intake on the firewall along with other abbreviations like “B/R” and “A/C”…but connect it to the “S”. The other two possible vacuum lines are easy. One is red (mine was) and goes to your fuel pressure regulator and the other one goes to your EGR I believe. Hope that helps on the connections. I would suggest getting new EGR spacer and throttle body gaskets while your doing the intake install. Also get a new upper/lower gasket (a new intake should come with it). You will also want some O-rings for your injectors because overtime they can breakdown and leak and they will give you a fresh seal. If your installing new injectors at the same time you won’t need O-rings because your injectors will have them on already. I lubed mine up with a tiny bit of Vaseline to help them slide in the intake and fuel railing. Your local parts store will carry a “A/C-Fuel Line Disconnect Tool” kit for around $10 bucks or so and can become very handy if you work on your car a lot. It will allow you to disconnect your lower intake fuel rail to make the intake install easier and get one more thing out of your way. You can do it without disconnecting but it is real easy to disconnect it. Make sure you clean the heads off (if they are new heads you don’t need to) real clean and smooth so your intake gasket has a nice surface to adhere to and seal against. Brake or Carb Cleaner along with a razor or gasket scraper would work well. I would stuff your heads ports with paper towels or something similar to keep the scrapings from entering into where the valves and combustion chamber are. Also cover the lifter valley with a towel or more paper towels to keep the shavings out as well and use a shop vacuum to help with clean up. Now if you have new heads the cleaning the head/intake/gasket surface will not be necessary.
I put a nice thick bead of high temp silicone on the block ends (I don’t like using the rubber ends that are supplied with your intake gaskets…they can slip out and cause a leak) and let it sit for about 10 minutes to "film" over and then set the lower intake on: Before I put the intake on this is what I do so I put a couple dabs of silicone under the FEL-1250 gasket (the gasket I used) and position the gasket over the ports as perfect as possible and then allow those dabs under the gasket to dry (I also put a tad more silicone around the water passages for a little extra support) so it will not move as I lower the intake on. On my gasket I had to trim a little bit of the coolant passages on the gasket because it was protruding into the passageway...To help insure proper intake alignment as it is being dropped down I used my old intake bolts and cut the hex-heads off of them and threaded them into the heads. I used 4 of them and made a rectangular shape out of them to cover “all angles” when I dropped it down…once you get the intake down you can then unscrew the studs you made and start to install your new intake bolts (assuming you bought new ones)…I got some new ones from Summit which the part number is SUM-G1579HS. I f you didn’t buy new ones you can probably just find some studs to use temporarily.
I slightly torqued the intake down after the "filming" just to get a little "squish" on the silicone and let it sit overnight...the next day I did the final torqueing procedure with the torque numbers (some people go by feel).
A torque wrench is your friend: Go around 18-20lbs for the lower intake bolts and about 10lbs on the upper intake…Use the proper torque sequence to tighten the bolts and you will need to go through the torqueing sequence probably 4 or 5 times to get all the play out of the bolts when it squishes the silicone/gasket.
Here is the tightening sequence order in simple terms (looking from front of car):
7 8
3 2
11 10
9 12
1 4
5 6
After you have everything together and the distributor installed at base timing (10*) check all your connections and make sure under the hood is clear to start it up. I would change your oil after your initial start-up and then again after a few hundred miles for a piece of mind. After you start your car make a visual check for any leaks, set your fuel pressure, and timing to optimize performance. Retighten the lower intake bolts after a few heat cycles.
Tear down to everything (removing the upper/lower intake with the injectors/throttle body/intake pipeing/hoses/etc.)...you will want to drain part of your coolant out...and just in case you forgot where some of your intake vacuum lines go I’ll try to jog the memory a bit with a little bit of a description: If your looking at the front of the engine and you look on the upper intake on the front left of it, that line goes to the charcoal canister. The vacuum line just to the right of it (thicker) goes around to a two way valve on the bottom right side of your upper intake and continues on into the back bottom of the lower intake where your pcv valve is located at. On the back of your upper intake you have a little intake tree that comes out of the back of the upper intake. It has three possible hose connections. The thicker one goes to the firewall vaccum tree where it is labeled as “S” (it will be a little up and to the right of the upper intake on the firewall along with other abbreviations like “B/R” and “A/C”…but connect it to the “S”. The other two possible vacuum lines are easy. One is red (mine was) and goes to your fuel pressure regulator and the other one goes to your EGR I believe. Hope that helps on the connections. I would suggest getting new EGR spacer and throttle body gaskets while your doing the intake install. Also get a new upper/lower gasket (a new intake should come with it). You will also want some O-rings for your injectors because overtime they can breakdown and leak and they will give you a fresh seal. If your installing new injectors at the same time you won’t need O-rings because your injectors will have them on already. I lubed mine up with a tiny bit of Vaseline to help them slide in the intake and fuel railing. Your local parts store will carry a “A/C-Fuel Line Disconnect Tool” kit for around $10 bucks or so and can become very handy if you work on your car a lot. It will allow you to disconnect your lower intake fuel rail to make the intake install easier and get one more thing out of your way. You can do it without disconnecting but it is real easy to disconnect it. Make sure you clean the heads off (if they are new heads you don’t need to) real clean and smooth so your intake gasket has a nice surface to adhere to and seal against. Brake or Carb Cleaner along with a razor or gasket scraper would work well. I would stuff your heads ports with paper towels or something similar to keep the scrapings from entering into where the valves and combustion chamber are. Also cover the lifter valley with a towel or more paper towels to keep the shavings out as well and use a shop vacuum to help with clean up. Now if you have new heads the cleaning the head/intake/gasket surface will not be necessary.
I put a nice thick bead of high temp silicone on the block ends (I don’t like using the rubber ends that are supplied with your intake gaskets…they can slip out and cause a leak) and let it sit for about 10 minutes to "film" over and then set the lower intake on: Before I put the intake on this is what I do so I put a couple dabs of silicone under the FEL-1250 gasket (the gasket I used) and position the gasket over the ports as perfect as possible and then allow those dabs under the gasket to dry (I also put a tad more silicone around the water passages for a little extra support) so it will not move as I lower the intake on. On my gasket I had to trim a little bit of the coolant passages on the gasket because it was protruding into the passageway...To help insure proper intake alignment as it is being dropped down I used my old intake bolts and cut the hex-heads off of them and threaded them into the heads. I used 4 of them and made a rectangular shape out of them to cover “all angles” when I dropped it down…once you get the intake down you can then unscrew the studs you made and start to install your new intake bolts (assuming you bought new ones)…I got some new ones from Summit which the part number is SUM-G1579HS. I f you didn’t buy new ones you can probably just find some studs to use temporarily.
I slightly torqued the intake down after the "filming" just to get a little "squish" on the silicone and let it sit overnight...the next day I did the final torqueing procedure with the torque numbers (some people go by feel).
A torque wrench is your friend: Go around 18-20lbs for the lower intake bolts and about 10lbs on the upper intake…Use the proper torque sequence to tighten the bolts and you will need to go through the torqueing sequence probably 4 or 5 times to get all the play out of the bolts when it squishes the silicone/gasket.
Here is the tightening sequence order in simple terms (looking from front of car):
7 8
3 2
11 10
9 12
1 4
5 6
After you have everything together and the distributor installed at base timing (10*) check all your connections and make sure under the hood is clear to start it up. I would change your oil after your initial start-up and then again after a few hundred miles for a piece of mind. After you start your car make a visual check for any leaks, set your fuel pressure, and timing to optimize performance. Retighten the lower intake bolts after a few heat cycles.
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