-just a note: I should have made it clear that the plenum (black plastic upper part) is most often referred to as the "Upper Intake Manifold." The lower aluminum part is referred to as the "Lower Intake Manifold." -sorry I didn't state it this way in the first place.

Harry

Administratorman, jrs3800, Thank You for your comments, and once again THANK YOU for all you do to make this forum possible. This is such a GREAT service to all of us.

You know, I still can hardly believe how sad it is that GM has "designed-in" these two very serious problems to such an otherwise outstanding engine design. Pesimistically, I guess they just had way too good of a thing going, and had to figure out some way of messing it up. (-just joking,,,, sort of,,)

Say, where was it (in this forum?) that someone had purchased an aluminum upper manifold, and had photos too? It seems to me that the major difference was the throttle body was way different, but that could be fixed with an adaptor. Seems to me that it was even less expensive than the plastic part.

Of course, that still won't fix the problem with the lower gaskets, but I'm hoping that someone will come out with a seriously re-designed replacement gasket to fix this.

Hey, keep up the good work , and we'll "stay tuned."
"C'YA around the 'ole computer !!"
Harry