5.7 vortex intake manifold.

[rlanders]

I have a 19 99 suburban with a 5.7L engine I had to replace the intake manifold gaskets. While torquing the manifold bolts it seems as if some of the bolts are bottoming out. The bolts are all the same length. Just wondering if I'm missing something or have others had the same trouble and what did you do?

[Swimmer8366]

Did you replace gromets?

 

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[rlanders]

There were no grommets on the bolts when I took them out. Are they rubber?

[rlanders]

There were no grommets on the bolts when I took them out. Are they rubber?

[arcasey]

When you said you "torqued" them, did you torque them to spec from a repair manual? I don't remember exactly what the torque spec was supposed to be but it wasn't very tight. Seems like I remember the final torque to be around 10-15 ft-lbs (which is not much at all). If you torqued them much tighter than that there is a chance that you may be bottoming out from compressing the gasket too much.

[rlanders]

I torqued them to the gm spec which is 11 ft lbs.I used new bolts and still had the same condition. I ended up putting lock washers on the bolts which made it a little better.

[arcasey]

That works too. The only other thing you could do is run a bottoming tap in the holes that seem to be giving you trouble to help clean them out. Did you by chance measure how deep the holes were and then measure the stack up of the manifold and the new gasket? I just did this same repair on my 96 K1500 about a year ago and I don't remember there being an issue with bottoming out. It shouldn't make much difference but which gasket set did you use? Not that is makes any difference now because it sounds like you have it back together but I used the Fel-Pro gasket set. How far from the manifold was the bolt head when things began to bottom out? If it was really close to the manifold you could always shave a little bit off the bolt's threads to shorten it. At only 11 ft-lbs you shouldn't need very many threads to actually hold the manifold in place.

[rlanders]

I used the felpro premium gaskets. I didn't measure the depths of the holes but they were touching the manifold before they started bottoming out. The washers seem to have done the trick.

[arcasey]

Well I'm glad it worked for you and everything is fixed but that is strange though.