Element

iTrader: (5)

Just about in the middle of doing my LS6 swap, and when I pulled off the stock manifold, I see this:




Is this sort of thing normal? I'm going to plug the ports with paper towels and clean everything up, but I can't help but worry some of that junk has already worked it's way into the chambers and perhaps scored the walls. Also sorta worried about the excess oil in there...even the bottom of the manifold bolts were oily.

vettenuts

iTrader: (4)

Hard to tell, is the stuff in the intake port gritty at all, or just greasy from the oil. Have you got a catch can?

Element

iTrader: (5)

Just oil in the ports themselves, and no catch can.

smask04C5

iTrader: (1)

Pretty much normal, appears that seals on intake worked as intended. Debris buildup is a result of the open areas between intake and small upper head bolt bosses.

Lithium

iTrader: (47)

Thats a lot of crap in there man. I had nothing near that when I swap manifolds a while back...

Mike98WS6

iTrader: (5)

Yeah mine looked like that when I pulled the intake and heads off. But not in the ports. Right around them.

CBX

That looks pretty typical.

Silverhawk_02TA

I had exactly the same stuff in my intake ports when I did my 90/90 swap last weekend. Except mine was 10 times worse. It totally coated the entire inside of the intake runner. It was pretty thick, too. This pic isn't the best, but you can see that the ports are completely black with sludge:



I stood the LS6 intake I took off up on the TB over night, and in the morning it was sitting in a pool of oil. Needless to say I removed all the PCV crap and threw it in the trash. I'm glad I've got heads on the way, because my intake runners look REAL nasty...

orangeapeel

iTrader: (18)

Looks like you could find an earthworm or two inbetween a few of those intake ports.

Third Gear

iTrader: (3)

Every engine is different. I had to take off the intake one time to check out a knock sensor and my ports were pretty clean except for a little risidue near the beginning of the port that wiped off.

Silverhawk, that's one filthy engine man. Get some cleaner and clean her up!

CRL 01 SS

iTrader: (4)

I had some dirt and oil built up around the intake ports when I swapped the LS6 to FAST 90, but it wasn't gunked up that bad. Plug the ports with a paper towel, use a shop vac to suck the gunk up while scraping at it lightly with something flat, preferably non-metal (plastic). Works good. Clean as much of it up as you can.

Silverhawk_02TA

You're telling me... I totally cleaned the engine less than a month ago. New Mexico is without a doubt the dustiest state I've ever had the "pleasure" of living in. That coupled with the fact that I live a mile down a dirt road is murder as far as keeping the engine clean goes. Like I said, that's just a couple weeks of buildup. I also get all kinds of dust inside the door panels and behind the interior trim, and I even have dust clogging around where the power window controls are in the armrests from air blowing through them.

When I move back to New York in March I'm just going to pay a place to totally detail the car inside and out, because I'm tired of fighting the environment down here.

SUX2BU

iTrader: (14)

99% of cars i work on look like that.
Throw the PCV in the trach and that solves the intake runners being nast problem.

Silverhawk_02TA

That's exactly the method I used to get all the dirt and dust from around the intake ports. It's the sludge lining the insides of the intake runners that I don't like. It's got the consistency of tar, and it's THICK. So thick that it has to be hampering airflow. If I didn't have heads on the way I would have definitely hit them with some kind of solvent to try to break some of that **** up.

MawneeC5

iTrader: (12)

I bought my 5.3 heads used and they had that gunk in the intake runners bad. Spent a good while cleaning all that crap out before I could get to work on porting them

One good thing about it was that the gunk was thick everywhere except in a small line of clean in the same spot in every runner. Now I know exactly where the air flow was the fastest through them. Gives me a good reference on where to port

Element

iTrader: (5)

So can I just pull the hose off the metal elbow on the valve cover, plug it with a small rubber cap, and plug the elbow on the TB where the PCV line connected to?

BigDaddyZ28

Your whole engine bay looks REAL nasty... It's not 'just' your intake runners...
IMO that much sludge and oil is NOT normal... At least, not normal in MY garage.


Sorry, I just had to say it...
I would be embarassed to pop my hood and show some crap like that to my friends... I can hear them 'goofing' on me now!

James

Silverhawk_02TA

Again, see my post above about the environment I live in. That engine bay was cleaned a couple weeks before. It's simply an ineviteable fact of the area in which I live. I'm not going to completely detail my engine every 2 weeks.

As far as the sludge goes, it's alot, but not abnormal for a PCV system that sucks up a bunch of oil into the intake. I've done head swaps on other LS1's that have looked just as bad.

BigDaddyZ28

I have the Helms manual for my '01 and I was reading the section about the PVC system on our cars. There is a full page at the beginning of the section that talks about how our PCV is designed to prevent the oil from getting in to the intake system... They make it sound like it can't happen.

I guess the reality of it is a little different from that though.

James

SUX2BU

iTrader: (14)

Yeah plug everything off and run a breather on the valve cover.