Thread: Is the intake gasket a problem on 2004 & newer 3800?

Oh. So I took some pics at what you're talking about, it makes sense to look right at the gaskets themselves.




Does this look like metal intake gaskets? I don't see any black, but I don't see much silver either. I'm thinking it's the new ones though, am I right?

looks to be silver. your one of the lucky ones wheres its been done for you already.

that does not excuse the upper intake from failing tho, you may want to mod the lim still, that way it can never leak coolant into the engine. check the egr tube in the manifold as well, they crack.

Well, I'm pretty happy about that, I remember the guy I bought it from saying he just had the intake gaskets done before I bought the car, I didn't know much about those problems at the time. And that is true. I was thinking of getting the Dorman 615-180 Intake Manifold that is supposed to keep that from happening. I've seen some of the plastic intake manifolds actually explode/implode, that frightens me.

if the trans cooler broke, you would have a dead tranny by now, because the coolant would be getting into your trans. or the trans fluid would be super low.

Originally Posted by mntnbiker

A little over a year ago I had my mechanic replace hoses and the belt and do a flush/fill. The car originally had Dex and that is what we had him put in it. I topped it off with Dex as well so I know for a fact we are not mixing green and DeathCool.

Inside my radiator does not look at all like that. Holy crap!!! Just the sludge under the cap.

Well, it's the same dex-cool sludge. If you just had it flushed, there's no way dex-cool got that bad in that short of time. Something mixed with it.

Well a quick pull of the trans dipstick after the car has been driven will make sure that the trans cooler isn't leaking by looking for either foamy stuff, or a loss of fluid. If that's okay, somebody put the wrong fluid in the cooling system.

Originally Posted by 02NavyBlue

Well a quick pull of the trans dipstick after the car has been driven will make sure that the trans cooler isn't leaking by looking for either foamy stuff, or a loss of fluid. If that's okay, somebody put the wrong fluid in the cooling system.

Fluid looked right up there and it wasn't foamy. Maybe a little closer to the brown side of pink which makes sense since it has been 50k miles since the last filter and fluid exchange which will be getting done also while in the shop.

If there was a leak and air was getting into the close system, could that create the sludge? Or if the flush job a year ago wasn't done thoroughly, the old stuff mixed with the new is sludging it up? Just don't see how any green could have been mixed with it. I topped it off shortly after getting it back last year with Prestone Dex Cool approved pink stuff and haven't had to really add any fluid til just recently (added the same Prestone Dex Cool).

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Air in the system can create sludge but this takes a long time. Old dex and new dex will not sludge. It could have been someone in the shop that added something that shouldn't be in there. Maybe they accidentally started with green just for a second and were like, oops wrong stuff, and stopped right away then got dex and used that. It doesn't take much to get that amount of sludge.