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180 Posts
Okay, I will post the tale of my lower intake manifold install... or at least a few of the highlights. A detailed recap of the 7 or 8 hour trial would be too long. For those who like to skip ahead, everything (mostly) is fine now. The first trouble I had, was trying to detach the negative battery post (good sign, eh?) I stripped the hell out of it and had to drill it out and replace it (trip to PepBoys)... so an hour taken doing the easiest task (so I thought). The rest of the removal of the Upper intake went pretty smooth - took a bit to figure out how to detach all the connections. You gotta love new cars, no two connectors work the same! When we took the upper off, there is some tiny ass green tube that had gotten brittle (or sucked to begin with) coming from the EGR running god knows where that snapped right in two. We gave it a temp fix using the heat shrink black stuff that we used for the wire splices... actually worked pretty well. I still have to call the dealer to see about fixing it (or even finding out what the hell it does).
The lower is connected to all sorts of stuff, including the fuel lines, which use these nifty connectors call spring lock or some such. Requires a special tool - trip no 2 to PepBoys, where we got the set (only 7 bucks - little plastic thingies). I tell you what - there is some black, crusty funk all over my LIM and the runners! If anybody elses car is as nasty as mine after 75,000 miles, get it cleaned! The Lower was actually pretty easy to do - except for being worried about damaging the IRMC cable... all the instructions had bold type DO NOT BEND OR DAMAGE and it had two weird connectors.
We cleaned around the place where the gaskets went as good as we could, but I was nervous about getting into the ports (or holes, whatever) under the LIM cause it would have been impossible to catch the crap from falling into the engine. Then we got the splice in the new adapters for the wiring harness that controls the injectors (the 19lb have a different connector - go f'ing figure. Thanks Ford!) So 6 splices, with soldering iron and shrink tubing later we found out the new injectors don't fit into the cool plastic wire guide... so now they are held in place with electrical tape and aluminum foil (to protect from the heat... guy at PepBoys suggested that, best idea we had, but you can see it through the UIM - no shows for me!)
Putting everything back on wasn't too bad, even though by now, my rump was killing me from leaning over the engine bay so long. The last straw is the ProFlow MAF sensor is longer than stock and the filter is pushed up against the side wall and hood, so I have to hack done one of the sections to make it fit.
And now - was it worth it? I'm not sure (if it blows up tomorrow, no). It certainly runs smoother - and seems to rev quicker. The gains were claimed to be 8 -15 HP, which is pretty modest. It makes a bit more noise - with a kind of "whoop" which sounds a bit like the runners opening. Should get better when I get the exhaust. My biggest prob is my fear of screwing something up. Instead of enjoying it, I'm driving around with the stereo off listening for trouble. I need some hypno-therapy like the guy in Office Space, where I just don't give a F anymore and start having fun.
Anyway, I'm sure no one will read this far - so I will wrap up. Hopefully the dyno this Fri will give me confidence that I'm not messing up the car (or at least evidence that I am, not knowing is worse). I'm like the Woody Allen of car mod-ing. How appalling.
My advice, if you like digging in your car, and you already have a good collection of tools (I used my brand new torque wrench 14 times!) than it's probably not that bad. If you aren't that mechanical or get cold feet easy - check into a garage. It's just across the boundary of tinkering.
:loser:
The lower is connected to all sorts of stuff, including the fuel lines, which use these nifty connectors call spring lock or some such. Requires a special tool - trip no 2 to PepBoys, where we got the set (only 7 bucks - little plastic thingies). I tell you what - there is some black, crusty funk all over my LIM and the runners! If anybody elses car is as nasty as mine after 75,000 miles, get it cleaned! The Lower was actually pretty easy to do - except for being worried about damaging the IRMC cable... all the instructions had bold type DO NOT BEND OR DAMAGE and it had two weird connectors.
We cleaned around the place where the gaskets went as good as we could, but I was nervous about getting into the ports (or holes, whatever) under the LIM cause it would have been impossible to catch the crap from falling into the engine. Then we got the splice in the new adapters for the wiring harness that controls the injectors (the 19lb have a different connector - go f'ing figure. Thanks Ford!) So 6 splices, with soldering iron and shrink tubing later we found out the new injectors don't fit into the cool plastic wire guide... so now they are held in place with electrical tape and aluminum foil (to protect from the heat... guy at PepBoys suggested that, best idea we had, but you can see it through the UIM - no shows for me!)
Putting everything back on wasn't too bad, even though by now, my rump was killing me from leaning over the engine bay so long. The last straw is the ProFlow MAF sensor is longer than stock and the filter is pushed up against the side wall and hood, so I have to hack done one of the sections to make it fit.
And now - was it worth it? I'm not sure (if it blows up tomorrow, no). It certainly runs smoother - and seems to rev quicker. The gains were claimed to be 8 -15 HP, which is pretty modest. It makes a bit more noise - with a kind of "whoop" which sounds a bit like the runners opening. Should get better when I get the exhaust. My biggest prob is my fear of screwing something up. Instead of enjoying it, I'm driving around with the stereo off listening for trouble. I need some hypno-therapy like the guy in Office Space, where I just don't give a F anymore and start having fun.
Anyway, I'm sure no one will read this far - so I will wrap up. Hopefully the dyno this Fri will give me confidence that I'm not messing up the car (or at least evidence that I am, not knowing is worse). I'm like the Woody Allen of car mod-ing. How appalling.
My advice, if you like digging in your car, and you already have a good collection of tools (I used my brand new torque wrench 14 times!) than it's probably not that bad. If you aren't that mechanical or get cold feet easy - check into a garage. It's just across the boundary of tinkering.
:loser: