Sounds good, but you don't need thread sealer on the bolts. None of them penetrate the water jackets.
Yep.. good call because you are. Some in the middle do make it through to the valley and will weep over time if not properly sealed. Best practice is to put a dab of silicone under the bolt heads too as your dropping them all the way down to thread engagement. Make sure to check and re-torque as necessary about once a year. The more aluminum that's involved(intake and heads).. the greater the need to consider it basic maintenance.
Did you repeat the sequence until the gaskets settled ? If you didn't, do so now. Sometimes it takes a half dozen or so rounds til the gaskets compress fully.
I was going to put this off a bit, but I started to think "what if" pieces of sealer (pic) break off and go downstream? Intake gaskets are in my near future and I will be reading this thread again just before it.
As long as sealant isn't attached to a chunk of metal there won't be any harm... That said I don't use any sealant on intake ports, just the water ports and then only a light skim coat...
The only sealant I would ever use on intake ports is Gaskacinch. Never RTV (which is not compatible with gasoline anyway). Water jackets get some RTV.
As usual, these guys are right on target. I would however caution against using those cheap stamped carb gaskets, same goes for intake gaskets too, without a good non-rtv based sealer. Can be a mess to clean up later but will stop the inevitable weeping during cold starts, evidenced by the fluid/carbon tracking/witness marks during later removal. Also helps with fastener load retention since things wiggle around less during contraction expansion cycles.
I tore it down and cleaned the intake (what a mess), re-assembled using Larry's recommendation. While I was in there, I used a mirror to id the cylinder heads (C8OE 2V) and noted the inside of the engine was spotless, and all the valve springs were shimmed with a .060 shim. All stock, but all in good looking shape. The intake ports (Torker 289) look like a good match for a stock heads. It will be ready to drive in a couple weeks.
my Intake is still sealed and engine is running great 3 years later. I will be doing it all again on my old engine, I'm prepping it with 289 heads with screw in studs and roller rockers. going to swap in a new cam while I have it on the stand. This along with a TCI c4 will go in my 72 Sprint...
What cam are you going to use? are your heads ported and/or milled? I would like to know how it turns out.
