I believe I have a serious vacuum leak. Alright, I'm guilty! I used RTV on the upper intake, throttle body, and EGR tube-to-plentium in conjunction with the used gaskets. I hear a deafening whistling noise, car doesn't idle w/o forcing the car to rev @ 2k rpm, when it does idle, it runs kinda rough @ 1750rpm. Yeah, vacuum leak at t.body, no brainer, eh?

Reason I'm rambling about this... if a 2.8l V6 were to have a vacuum leak as described, would that cause the exhaust manifold to glow red? Or is there something else going on? Just replaced EGR valve & tossed other OEM injectors as 4 of my 6 original ones leaked.

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-jason
'87SE

personally,
I'd remove all that stuff again and put it back together with just gaskets and NO sealant...it's not much work. Then you'd be sure you got it fixed
Dave

Oh yeah. I'll be removing the plentium again and this time do it right. Was hoping to avoid buying gaskets and do it the 'poor man way'. Buying the intake gasket set from Felpro is such a waste since all I need is t.body, EGR to plentium, and the two plentium gaskets....

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-jason
'87SE

Make sure you hook up all of your vacuum lines. It is easy to overlook the ones under the upper plenum and beneath the throttle body. You also have to make sure that the lower intake manifold is sealed correctly to the engine block. It takes a good bead of sealer at either end of the block as there is a gap of a little less than 1/8th of an inch.

Also, if you used real RTV with silicone, your O2 will be shot. Use only O2 safe sealers.

Always practice safe-sealing.

[This message has been edited by TK (edited 12-16-2003).]

I just went through this and I would bet I know what is causing the leak. If you look under the Throttle Body there is a large vacuum tube that goes into the backside of the bottom of the Throttle Body, and connects to an elbow tube that goes to the lower intake manifold right next to the cold start injector.

This is a major leak and will certainly make your exhaust glow BRIGHT red and make timing impossible. You have to remove the Throttle Body to put it on, it just sticks right in. Good luck!

Did you check yet? I need closure..