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2004+ lim?

D

Deathsports

New member
Hi a quick question I would love to know and would ease my paranoia :th_skull:. I watch my friends and familly have gasket problems with pre-2003 GM intake manifold paper gaskets, spending several hundreds to get them fixed. Is this issue fixed in my 2004 Grand Prix N/A?.... I have flushed out the DEX-COOL crap and replaced with green when I bought the car with 109,000 miles. Should I be worry free about this??
 


its possible you have the old gasket set, but the only way youre gonna find out is by looking.

have you been losing coolant? is your oil milky? any odd running issues or smells from the exhaust? if not, then youre probably fine, but keep an eye on it.
 
I Agree with Bio,
Keep an eye on things which you should always do anyway.

We had a 95 Lumina with the 3.1 whos intake gasket was known for failing, I think more so then the GEN II 3.8. Ours lasted until 130,000 without leaking a drop running clean dex its entire life.
 
As near as I can tell, aluminum lim gaskets didn't get used until '05. My '06 is fine, but I need to replace the gaskets on an '04.
 



Series III

The Series III motors include many changes. The upper intake manifold is now aluminum on the naturally aspirated models.




This was from the Buick V6 wiki. Would this now prevent the problem? I wonder why this happens still. I am just worried since I have a few years of payments with already 113,000 miles. Hopefully this will be fine until around 150,000 at least. My car doesn't leak or burn coolant, although I noticed it burns around 2 quarts of oil every 3,000 miles. Maybe Ill set up a LIM savings account :th_nervous:
 
the upper intake being aluminum doesnt have anything to do with the lower intake manifold gaskets. it helps because the plastic ones get weak, blow up, crack, melt, etc.
 


2 quarts in 3K miles? wow. I had a TBI 350 SBC that burned a quart in 2k with 226K miles on it.

a quart in 1500 seems a bit extreme. Possible valve steam seal problem? Does it smoke from the exhaust on startup after sitting a few hours?

Reason I bring that up is these engines had a TSB on valve stem seals in regards to excessive oil consumption.
 
Yeah the 04's had the plastic gaskets for some reason, even though it is a Series III. 05 was the first year for the aluminum LIM gaskets.
 
Easy way to tell which gaskets you have is to look at the area between the head and LIM. Do you see black or silver? Silver is the aluminum gaskets.

The larger thing to keep in mind here is the LIM's will typically look horrible when I pull them. Yet the car rarely exhibits any symptoms or issues from them. The larger issue on the NA motors was the upper intake manifold itself. Around the EGR stovepipe it would expand and contract until it cracked, then fill the LIM with a half gallon of coolant before it began pouring into the cylinders.
 
SuperSport said:
Yeah the 04's had the plastic gaskets for some reason, even though it is a Series III. 05 was the first year for the aluminum LIM gaskets.
Click to expand...

My 04 block still has series II cast into it but the RPO code says L32. Many things were meshed together during the l67/l32 conversion.
 


My car does not smoke at all. Since I just bought the car a few months ago, I was very surprised to see a LOW OIL light with 113,000 miles. Adding a quart here and there doesn't bug me too much. My Previous car was a GEO METRO :th_shakinghead2: that I had to add pretty much every fluid daily so this is no big deal. I will check to see what kind of gasket I have if I can see it. Thanks for the info and hopefully it will last. Id like to remove the EGR and get it tuned to drop the engine light codes, but I dont know how to do neither. I wonder if there is a place that would do it for me
 
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