Many of you have a lot of auto tech experience over several different vehicles, and some of you are even current or former techs who have seen a lot of **** in your time. When I bought this car I had practically no experience what so ever... I basically only owned an adjustable wrench, a wingman multitool, and I dunno whatever else not much... but I never had a garage before now either...

I've received a lot of great advice from this forum and I wouldn't be anywhere without this forum or the internet in general. I've spent well over $1000 in buying a tool chest and all the basic tools one should have including all the other things a shop has like gloves, cleaning supplies, work lights, shop heaters, jacks, stands, etc etc

I've had the car parked now for almost a month and a half now... the first month was spent slowly looking it over, slowly taking it apart and learning what the hell it is and how it works. I started with the front suspension, moved onto the wire harness(which I have rewrapped now in pics) learning all the sensor locations, and long story short I'm current at this point now...







Here is my current concern after inspection...



I'm no mechanic but it looks like ****... practically every gasket appears to be compromised...







It looks like the runners in the manifold are half oil covered... What should I do? Should I just buy a new manifold and set of gaskets and call it a day(its nearly 10 years old now) or should I clean it... and what if anything do I do about the inlets in the lower aluminum part... uh.. whatever its called... lower intake manifold I dunno... (that's one of the problems not a lot of info on the LS4 I wish there was a straight up book I could read front to back on this car specifically...)

Basically my question for you senior members is...

1) How if at all do I clean this? Does it really need cleaning? also... given the stock manifold is nearly 10 years and 200,000km should I just replace with new, paint, and call it a day (not concerned with saving money btw)

2) What else should I be pulling apart from here to inspect or replace? (besides the rear valve cover gasket that's coming off for cleaning and painting and I will install all new gaskets there too even though my vale cover gaskets easily are doing their job based on inspection)

 

What I did with my intake manifold was remove all the hardware and gaskets so it was just the manifold. Then I threw it in the bathtub with a good helping of dish soap. I scrubbed the hell out of it, let it sit for like a day to eat at the rest of the oil and then scrubbed like hell and rinsed it thoroughly. Came out looking new. For the intake ports on the heads I simply just soak a rag with some gasoline and start wiping, it should come off fairly easy. And once you get it all cleaned up I highly suggest you invest in a good catch can to help reduce all the oily residue from building up there again.

 

ok I was just wondering if a brand new intake would be a good investment seeing as I want to keep the car for many years to come, but if you say they last forever and I can clean it then no problem right? Do they last forever?

Catch can... is there a how to I can follow? I am hoping there is no difference between my cartuning turbo setup and a regular setup... I'm not sure which hoses to redirect... again there is no book or information on this engine that a newbie like me could follow. I don't have years of experience with engines.

Since ive already gone this far and because I took pictures and videos I feel pretty good about putting it all back together so far... would it be a good idea to actually remove all the valve springs and rockers etc that hole thing? Remove valves and clean as much as the top end I can?

Is this something you think I could do? I have torque wrenches etc and all the tools to do it just no experience but like I said just take a **** load of videos I should be good no?

Is there any danger in an amateur doing this?

Also... I think I may have messed up... I rewrapped all my harness with 3m electrical tape you can see the red and yellow in the first picture.... was that a bad idea am I going to pay for that? SHoudl i undo and start over?

 

You may need new gaskets for the intake manifold but the manifold itself should be plenty good. Boosted applications do require a different catch can setup than a NA car, just google it and there's bound to be a boosted LS write-up on it. If you really want to dive in to it you can pull the heads and take it to be professionally cleaned up, doesn't cost too much typically. If you don't want to pull the heads you're fine but they'll definitely have build up in the combustion chambers.

 

In this case only if it ain't broke don't fix it. Spray some brake cleaner and clean what you can out the intake manifold and cylinders.

As for your catch can in forced induction setups is both valve covers should be vented to catch can with a breather with a check valve. The intake source should be pulling from the catch can to maintain normal operation

 

ok so BOTH front and rear valve covers have an outlet... currently my rear one is hooked up to the TOP of the manifold... and my front one was disconnected.

So you are saying hook BOTH those up to some sort of... "T" attachment which goes to the catch can?

The breather you are talking about? Is THAT a filter on top of the catch can?

Where does the check valve come into play? On BOTH the tubes coming from the valve cover or the one returning to the intake or all three?

 

the pics look like a normal ls with some miles on it, room for improvement, nothing to be alarmed about

this only works with one particular catch can system on the market (there is only one able to run a pcv system while being able to vent any way you like, larger hoses or from both valve covers that is..)

 

You should also start shopping for a good machine shop. Figure out who's good in your local area there are things you'll want to do over time that just require that kind of service. If you pull the heads its worth having them gone through get the seats touched up and the guides checked and new seals. I don't lap valves so I farm out my head work.

Its not expensive to have parts hot tanked and I just hate fiddling with cleaning stuff personally.