Hello everyone,

So I finally thought I will replace the gaskets that were spewing tiny bit of water out and resulting in a P0304 code. After a lot of work I got out the intake manifold, and surprised to see how bad it looked. I have changed oil many times, but never saw any whte bubbly stuff....

Anyway, so I want to know what I should do at this point. The whole area around the manifold and the engine is blackened with oil, and the ports have a lot of build up

1. Is there a way to know if the head gasket too needs to be replaced from how intake manifold gunk looks?

2. How do I clean these? wipe? use some kind of liquid?

3. should I just put everything together and maybe use one of those gunk remover liquids and run the car?

(BTW, I have more fotos if anyone needs)

Thanks a lot.

 

No one? what do I clean these stuff with? :/

 

Looks like the old gasket is still stuck to the manifold, so get that off first. If not, brake cleaner will work, or better yet, if you know someone with a parts washer, put it in that. It will clean it right up.

As far as the gunk goes, clean those water ports out really good with brake cleaner or again, a parts washer. DON'T use any thing in the heads unless you pull them. Otherwise, use a tooth brush to brush the gunk up and out. And if you got the extra money, flush and replace the coolant now. The build up in the second pic will lead to overheating and HG failure if it's fully clogs, if it isn't already.

Seafoam makes a product called "Deep Creep". I've never used it personally but had a co-worker use it to clean the sludge out of the valve train in his Chrysler 3.5HO and he loves it. You can use that to break of the carbon in the exhaust/intake ports or put it all back together and use a few cans of SeaFoam or Gum Out equivalent to clean them.

More photos are always a plus.

 

looks like oil in the coolant.

 

How does the oil look? If it look like that tan milk shake there is no reason to continue.

Since the intake if off it will be very difficult to test the head gaskets.

I use the red scotch bright pad. I have the kind that hooks to a drill. You want everything real clean so the new gasket can seal



The color of death to a motor.

 

Thanks a lot guys!

I cleaned those with a blade, then with some cloth wetted with WD40 and then cleaned the WD40 and anything left with a cloth wetted with Carb cleaner ( ).

Sliding the blade on the metal feel like its pretty clean, but there are some black marks that doesn't go away.. I can try to clean intake manifold that's out pretty well (guess I can take it to a shop..) but how would I clean the parts that are sitting on the engine? (I guess I can't really sand it or anything like that and risk dropping small parts in those holes (and I don't really know what those are..!)

And how terrible is it if tiny bits of dust/oil go in through those openings? I haven't taken the valve covers out, so the only openings are from removing the intake.

Also, is using carb cleaner/WD40 a terrible idea? should I try to clean those off too?


I definitely would do a couple of coolent flushes and oil changes after. If that would take these off, then I'm relieved!

The oil always looked darker than usual, like burnt, but never milky. It has been slowly leaking oil in the driveway, and out around in the intake manifold. So I hope the problem is oil leaking out. The two intake gaskets both had spots they were clearly broken, and the foamy looking are was one of the places it was broken.

That said, when I took the oil cap off this time (I have driven maybe like 5 times in the past 3mos) there was some sludge on the cap. Ill drain the oil and check to make sure.

Thanks a lot guys... again!

This all started with a stupid 0304 code. I couldn't figure why the hell it was throwing the code randomly until a guy showed me a slight leak near the 4th cylinder in the intake manifold. Car ran decently fine (some rough idle on cold starts and that tick!!!). So I am trying to fix that without breaking the bank

I'll try to put more photos if how things look tomorrow.

 

I don't believe his build up in the water jackets of the intake are due to a HG issue. I've seen a lot of the 3100/3400s with this exact issue. However, if the passages are completely block, then a HG may have been damaged if the car was ever overheated.

I've seen it caused one of two ways. 1) The car was originally filled with Dex-Cool and was neglected on the cooling system in which case the additives break down and you get build up like this. or

2) Someone mixed Dex-Cool with the old style green stuff. In small quantities it usually doesn't harm anything, but enough of it and the chemicals react and it turns into a gel and then cakes up.

Both the 3100s in my old Buick had this issue and both the 3400 in my brothers Alero and the 3400 in my sisters Malibu had these issues.

Get it cleaned out, flush the rest of the cooling system. Doesn't really matter what you put back into it, green or orange, since it's being flushed.