Okay, so i got the upper intake replaced. Started the car today and she was misfiring like a sonovabitch. check the coolant. it'* low again. any know cases of a dorman failing with only a few hundered on them? or could this be somewhere else too (head gasket?) it just kinda makes me angry cuz I went throght the trouble of replacing the uim and it still consumes coolant!!

Did you replace the lower intake gaskets too?

Many of us have found that the issue is even worse with the lower intake gaskets. My lower intake gaskets were severly deformed with only 76K on the clock.

your lowers are farrr more important than the upper, imho. but it'* not as widely known. i think far more s2'* have met their end in a yard because of lowers. *sniff*

anyway, the good news is you didn't put on any non-reusable gaskets putting the upper back on, so it doesn't hurt anything (other than time) to take it all back off! yay!

so get out there and get-r-done. make sure you change the oil pronto, and don't try to drive it anywhere... unless you don't like your bearings. oil change is critical...

yup

Like the other guys said, your lowers are probably shot. I just replaced my upper and lower gaskets on my 97 3800 II yesterday. The upper gasket was in perfect shape, but the lower was melted and mangled (with only 70,000 miles on this car). The plastic had cracked around the silicone molded O rings on the lower, allowing the silicone seals to creep around and start to blow out. All of the seals on the lower for coolant passages were destroyed like this, from 70k miles of normal use.

The lower manifold gaskets will look like the gasket on the right in this photo.


http://www.mike.vcn.com/bonneville/gaskets.jpg




Picture courtesy of Mkaake.

total agreement here with all comments. Tear it back down and change the lowers
as well as the coolant elbow. Also get that oil out of there pronto.

actually, those ones weren't mine

if you'd like, i can post pics of mine when I get home...

Well, that'* good (and bad). Know what make fixing it really easy? A garage. Oh well, I'll have to see if I can get it done at school. I'm actually going to be working on all of it this time, so it won't be as difficult figuring out where all the extra bolts go