well, i finally finished putting the truck back together after changing the intake manifold gasket. i have a 1999 Chevy K1500, 80K miles. no leaks as of yet (i'm hoping at least another 80K before doing that again). the hardest things were reconnecting the fuel lines, not at the intake manifold but at the bracket near the firewall, and putting the distributor back the exact same way it was taken out. for the fuel lines i ended up having to disconnect them at the intake manifold and connecting them first at the bracket, then trying my hardest to pull them to get them lined up to go into the intake manifold.
i searched alt.trucks.chevy and alt.autos.4x4.chevy-trucks before starting and found a lot of very helpful posts (Ian, if you're ever in Dallas, i owe you a beer). The Haynes manual does a very incomplete job of listing out all the steps. It only has 8 steps for "intake manifold removal"! i guess they can do it in 8 steps since step 5 is basically "disconnect everything from the intake manifold".
a friend gave me the brilliant idea of keeping track of everything that is being taken off. then you only have to go in reverse through the list to put everything back together. in order to try and give something back to the community, so to speak, here is the list that i kept. this gives a much better view of what needs to be done than what is listed in the Haynes manual. actually, if i had seen this list before starting, i might not have started at all :) i hope i'm not scaring anyone. this is simply a list i kept to guide me, and i'm not the most experienced mechanic, so the names of things might be wrong. please don't simply go by this list when doing this. get more posts written by better mechanics than me, and get a manual.
here it goes, in order of things that need to be removed....
- air filter housing
- vortec cover
- belt
- a/c compressor (unbolt it and swing it across to other side, hoses intact)
- radiator hoses
- thermostat clips
- throttle cables
- throttle cable clips
- coil clips
- fan
- air line opposite fuel lines
- fuel injector wiring
- passenger's side spark plug wires including C plug
- thing on intake manifold connected to evaporative canister (see EECS in manual)
- knock sensor mount clip
- main harness bracket on driver side
- exhaust manifold hose
- power steering pulley
- pulley bracket
- coil
- distributor cap (mark the rotor to distributor base and distributor base to engine. or, even better, see Ian's previous posts)
- distributor bolt and bracket
- distributor
- driver's side spark plug wires
- disconnect one side of fuel filter (to relieve pressure on fuel lines)
- fuel lines
- heater hose
- alternator bracket
- water pump hose
- hose from water pump to thermostat
- bracket on passenger's side going to coil and thing from step 13 (one post earlier said to bend this part of the bracket that hangs over the intake manifold, but i found it easier to remove it)
- intake manifold bolts
- passenger's side valve cover (called rocker arm cover in manual)
- finally, lift intake manifold