5.4 2v intake question

BigBore96 · May 6, 2018

I have another mustang with a 5.4 2v using intake adapter plates. It's a car I picked up in a deal and now that it's warm I've been messing with it. Im not concerned with the drawbacks of using plates at the moment but am in need of help getting it to seal.

I took the intake off as the intake didn't seal worth a damn and the motor was drinking coolant into the intake. I cannot for the life of me get the intake to seal without a vacuum leak to the plates

Gasket wise is there any special info I need to know? Example: use 2 oem thickness gaskets or use a thinner gasket to seal the plates followed by oem to the intake?

96blak54 · May 6, 2018

Hmmm

I assume the heads are pi....

Place a gasket on the head and insert the bolts to check alignment, before laying down the adapter. Plus this will give you an idea what direction to load the gasket while tightening. If the heads have been ported, sealing becomes a bigger issue and pushing the gasket in a direction that allows sealing may play a roll. Ports are ported to the gasket edges leaving no room for error.

BigBore96 · May 6, 2018

They are pi heads unported. The intake is an early non aluminum crossover so I'm already expecting the intake is going to cause me problems later.

The plates seal fine to the head whether I use a felpro like paper gasket or an oem. The intake doesn't seal worth a damn to the plate which is what got me thinking if there was a common knowledge of which gaskets to use for head to plate and plate to intake as there is a difference in thickness.

The plate to head has very little movement ability before tightened down whereas the intake has far more.

96blak54 · May 6, 2018

Check gasket alignment with adapters and intake.

96blak54 · May 6, 2018

Sounds just like the same problem we npi guys had back when used adapter plates before blobbing rtv in the water port

OLD H2S · May 6, 2018

"Right Stuff"is your friend.

BigBore96 · May 6, 2018

Ended up doing the npi head with pi intake method of blobbing rtv.

However. I don't think I had to. This time when I torqued it down i noticed the bolts were either bottoming out before full torque or running out of threads. So i threw a couple washers on and should be good. I don't know how I didn't catch that the first time.