Greasy Inlet manifold

[AlexanderVanBaelen]

Hi all,

I was playing a bit with the cruiser, preparing it for our annual technical control. I noticed that inlet manifold has quite some greasy material on top of it - especially on the first two cylinders. The bottoms are also slightly greasy, but hey what do you want with a car from 1999 with 250k km run!?

Does anybody know if this is oil or cooling liquid related or if it is just the seal which is getting old and needs to be replaced? Terrified to take the manifold of and to see loads of crud inside! Only benefit can be that it would drive faster after removing it

Cheers!
Alex

 

[StarCruiser]

It's breather oil coming back into the inlet to be burned. The inlet manifold is quite heavy and sits on rubberised metal plate seals, 6 of them and is fixed with studs and nuts with rubber washers round them. If the studs come out with the nuts and washers, it's possible to slip the old seal plates out and slide the new ones in before replacing the studs. I gave mine a smear of RTV sealant after cleaning the surfaces as best I could. Not too tricky to do, just don't drop and lose any of the manifold bolts like I did will you.

 

[AlexanderVanBaelen]

Thanks Clive,

Will give it a go in some time. Would it not be easiest to take of the entire manifold, just to clean everything at the same time?

 

[clivehorridge]

Thanks Clive, (it was Richard )

Will give it a go in some time. Would it not be easiest to take of the entire manifold, just to clean everything at the same time?

 

[AlexanderVanBaelen]

Sorry!

Thanks Richard! (and Clive )

 

[StarCruiser]

Thanks Clive,

Will give it a go in some time. Would it not be easiest to take of the entire manifold, just to clean everything at the same time?

To do this involves removing all the injector pipes which are intertwined with the inlet manifold. This is ok if you get them back in the correct order by the correct route AND you make sure everything is clean as a clean thing on clean day as any tiny microscopic particle of dirt that gets into the diesel injection system can do serious damage to the injection system. That's why I elected to do it the way I did. I didn't have enough bungs for all the pipes and what they fitted on to.

Surfaces aren't difficult to clean for the intake seals as you can clean around the outside then run some rag back and forth with carb or brake cleaner on it in the space between manifold and head.