Alright, well its pretty much a week since we did the intake gaskets. When removing the smaller coolant hoses that run into the intake the metal connector snapped and when we looked closer at it we saw that it was corroded shut. It took 5 days to get the new part shipped.

As far as the gasket situation, when we removed the plenum from the intake, it turned out that somebody had already 'attempted' to change the gaskets before. Instead of removing the old gasket and putting on a new one, they decided it would be wise to just place the new gasket onto the existing one and bolt everything back up. This is what was causing the massive leak and why the car wouldn't be under 1500rpm at idle. We changed the remainder of the gaskets and they seemed fine. The valve covers gave the most trouble as the cork gasket was extremely difficult to remove.

We started the car up today and it ran EXTREMELY rough for about 3 or 4 min until it finally settled down. We figure it is just the computer trying to adjust to the absence of a leak. It now idles around 800 rpm or so which is a vast improvement but it seems to be running a little rich. Im gonna drive it a bit this week and hopefully things will smooth out.

Overall the job was decently tough, it was more a lack of room to remove bolts, wiring etc, and this took up the bulk of our time. Once we had some room to work with the plenum off, things went a lot faster.

 

future reference you can unbolt the subframe and lower the engine down about 7 inches which gives you what seems like miles of room

 

Good deal!

I've run into situations like yours where I discovered that a moron with a wrench was there before me. My favorite example was the guy who "changed head gaskets" on the 3.8 in a late 70s Olds Starfire. Barely ran and leaked coolant all over the place.

This idiot had gotten the heads off okay. Then he had slathered the new head gasket with red RTV and bolted the head on without a torque wrench. The bolts that were easy to access were tight (but not tight enough). The botls that were hard to get at were barely more than finger tight. It was pathetic. I scrapped that car.

Sounds like you, OTOH, will have a happy ending!

 

Well, after running quite roughly on Friday, the car refused to start at all on Saturday. My dad pulled the spark plugs and they were in pretty rough shape. We picked up a new set and installed them yesterday and the car started up. Its been running fairly well now, I've taken it on a few longer (30-50km) drives in the past few days and although its somewhat rough at startup, once running, it seems fine.

Also, the coolant leak that started this thread seems to be non-existant now. Between fixing the massive intake leak and replacing the corroded piping, it seems to have dealt with the problem.

All in all, the job cost roughly $145, it was $70 for the new fitting that was corroded, $40 for the gaskets, and $15 for a new set of plugs, and maybe $20 or so for miscellaneous items like gasket sealant, thread sealant etc., plus a number of hours and cuts/scrapes. I feel that this price is worth it since the car is running better and sounding better than it ever has since I've owned it.