What the heck??? It failed even before I started the engine. I went to put all the coolant in after having added the engine oil and started to hear a tapping noise once I topped off the radiator. "tap" "tap" "tap" "tap"... What the heck is that noise. I peek under the Raider to see that I had coolant dripping into a puddle on my oil catch pan. I was kind of lucky I put it under there, I just needed a place out of the way and it wasn't bugging me so I left the oil catch pan down there or else there would have been a big mess.



In order to find out where this was coming from, I poured an additional 32 oz of fluid total into the radiator to see if I could locate it. I couldn't quite make out where it was coming from but I narrowed it down to somewhere above the water pump but below the intake plenum. I just spent some time disassembling the top end of the block to get a visual on where this could be leaking from. I think I have coolant leaking into my cylinders. I can see some coolant puddling up inside the intake manifold. WTF!@#$%^&*()_+ I know I was very diligent about all gaskets, and all torque specifications. I'm so frustrated I'm almost ready to give up on this project!!! I'm going to see if I can narrow this down and I'll take more photos of what I find. In the mean time I'll see if anyone else has any ideas or comments.

In these pictures you can see coolant inside the intake Manifold and around the perimeter of the Intake Manifold and Cylinder Heads. UUUGGGHHH!!!

First, where did the water hit the ground? Under what?

Second, there is only two sources of water high enough to put it into the lower plenum. There's the intake air heater just after the TB, and the intake seal to the heads. The second is most likely, as the seal is hard to get right because of the angles.

Hi fasteddy,

Thanks for the quick reply. The coolant was leaking in two places when it hit the ground. Spot #1 was a heavy dripping leak from the rear most bottom point of the bell housing. Spot #2 was a slight leak drop-by-drop style from the bottom lip of the rounded portion on the front of the oil pan.

Remove the lower intake and look at the surface to see if it's badly etched. Clean it up and put a straight edge down each side to see if it's warped.

If it's warped or etched badly, you might be able to have it trued, but if it's bad, you'll need a replacement.

If everything looks OK, reinstall it using 2 coats of Permatex Copper Spray-A-Gasket on the head port flanges and on the lower intake flanges. Be sure to tighten bolts in a circular order as described in the FSM.

Frank

Permatex Copper Spray-A-Gasket That's great stuff!!! That is a hard seal to get on there. Good Luck

Ditto the above. If you had the heads resurfaced, it affects the clearance and alignment on the lower intake. You're an autocad guy - you can visualize why. We used to have this trouble on small block Chebbies, and we used to have a lesser amount than the head cut taken off the manifold flange, calculated from the trig of the angles.

I'll add this to FrankR's comment (hi, Frank, long time no talk), I do the torque down in steps, tapping the intake with a dead blow in between steps to settle the intake into the vee.

While you have the lower intake off, check the oring on the water pump end of the steel pipe.

Deadblow, good idea fasteddy. I replaced that O-Ring with my full engine seal kit and put a little Permatex Right Stuff gasket maker on it for good measure.

I found the leak source. Evidently, the intake Manifold was not torqued down as I thought. It was so loose. I don't understand how I could have missed that. I cleared out all the coolant from the intake valves in the cylinder heads. I'll put all of this back together in the next couple of hours or so.

Feast your eyes.

Here is a picture of that Permatex stuff I was talking about on that cooling pipe you mentioned. You can see it leaking out but you can't see the replaced O-ring inside.

Okay, I fixed my coolant leak. Yes you guys were right. It was the intake manifold. Evidently I never torqued it down. I can't believe I missed it. However, I wanted extra assurance that I wasn't going to have this failure again. I decided to put a little Permatex Right Stuff Gasket Maker on both sides of the new intake Manifold gaskets to fill in any little imperfections that may exist between the mating surfaces and the gaskets.



After applying the Right Stuff liberally and torquing down the Intake Manifold, I re-installed all the parts to the Raider. Except the Hood and the Skid plates. You never know what else you might run into until you get the vehicle running well. I also filled the coolant in the radiator and was anticipating more dripping but I found the source of the problem and fixed it after all. Whew!!! No leaks. After having seen the amount of fluid in the intake valves, I was afraid I had a lot of coolant slip into the oil pan. I was able to drain out a little oil using my fabulous new oil drain valve from Sure Drain. No coolant was found in the oil thankfully. Tomorrow I will start the Raider and try to get the timing set properly. Does anyone have any tips for me?