I'm at a total loss, giant vacuum leak

g36 monkey

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Alright, so ever since I put my motor in from the red car, I've had a little vacuum leak from between the intakes that has gotten progressively worse. Friday I said "well, this will be easy, let me just go ahead and swap intake gaskets, do an oil change and coolant flush.


Everything went smoothly (for once) until I put on the upper. I get it down, and reassemble everything, do the smoke test, it leaks.

So, I pull the upper back off, and can see it only leaks in the back driver side port, maybe a bit on the back passenger side, but the rest is fine.

I looked up another torque spec (since they seem to vary from manual to manual) and put it back down, same thing.

So I said "well, lets see if silicone will help"

So I dabbed some silicone around those ports, then put it back down. Leak was worse.

So then I get the bright idea "I need more silicone" so last night I put a lot down, I wanted to make sure if it could seal, it would.


Car is barely driveable because the vacuum leak is so bad now. I'm going to go pull it back off, clean everything, but then I have no idea what to do.

Gaskets are readily available, should I get 2 gaskets and stack them, you know the old school hillbilly way of making stuff seal?

It sounds like a miss, but all the injectors are plugged in, all the spark plugs and wires and coil are good.

And, it's directly related to vacuum because I'm losing brakes.

So, any suggestions, please dump them here. Thanks.
 

Musturd

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Check all your vacuum lines and make sure the manifold isnf cracked is my best guess
 
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g36 monkey

g36 monkey

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Check all your vacuum lines and make sure the manifold isnf cracked is my best guess

All the lines are good. It's definitely coming from between the two manifolds, which leads me towards cracked intake as well. F me.
 

Musturd

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All the lines are good. It's definitely coming from between the two manifolds, which leads me towards cracked intake as well. F me.


That at sucks it may have happened when you crashed the red one , it was pretty crunched in the front hmm it could be hard to find
 
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g36 monkey

g36 monkey

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Its actually not the intake from the red car, it came off the black one I bought. The intake from the red car is in my garage but takes a bit of modification to put on. I have a spare upper at a friends house so I'll try that out.

PS I feel pretty dumb. One hose was disconnected, I missed it last night. So I have driveability but there is still a definite large vacuum leak.
 

RichV

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Are your bolts too long , maybe?

maybe warped?
 
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g36 monkey

g36 monkey

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Alright, well I'm leaning towards a warped lower at this point. My buddy had another upper laying around, so I threw that on, new gasket, no silicone, to spec following the torque sequence, replaced all the vac lines and added hose clamps in a few places just to increase the seal. Still the same leak between the intakes.

Its the thin papery gasket style. The windstar intake had big rubber gaskets. I wonder if they absorbed the "warpage" so it wasn't noticeable with that intake on the red car?
 

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