If you have the money go ahead and buy the bolts. I've always reused them. Since you only tighten then to 11 ft.lbs. I doubt seriously if they can be at all stretched. Don't over tighten them and do use an in.lb or accurate ft.lbs. torque wrench. Over tightening will distort the gaskets.

 

I'll add some tips no one has yet mentioned.

• You only have to loosen the P/S bracket for access to that front intake bolt.
• Don't try to take the EGR pipe loose from the exhaust manifold. It's probably not going to happen. And careful with the intake end of it. Don't booger up the nut with the wrench. A little heat may or may not be necessary to break it loose. Sometimes tapping on the intake or fitting (not too hard now) while applying moderate wrench pressure works the best.
• Make sure the threads in the bolt holes in the heads are clean and clear of debris. Use a tap to chase the threads and make sure (with a screwdriver) that nothing is packed in the bottom of the holes that are blind (mine were absolutely full of junk in the bottom of the hole). Then clean out with carb cleaner or brake cleaner. Lay rags or paper towels in the intake valley to catch stuff. Vacuum everything out after cleaning.
• Wire brush the threads on the bolts and use the white teflon thread sealer (like for head bolts) or buy the new bolts with the sealer already printed on them.
• Torque to specs with an inch pound torque wrench in sequence twice. Let sit overnight, and then go over one more time. Don't try to use a ft lb torque wrench for this.
• Mark your distributor rotor position and don't turn the engine. Put the distributor back exactly in the same place (factory hold down should hold distributor in only one position). If the factory hold down is not there or has been modified, you will have to set cam sensor retard with a capable scanner.
• AND NEVER NEVER NEVER use wire brushes and drills to remove gasket material. You don't want powdered gasket and other stuff circulating in your oil - and sometimes a little wire breaks off too. In my youth I once had a piece of wire lock up an oil pump in a customer's car. Sharpen a putty knife with a file to a razor edge and use that. I've used the same putty knife for 20 years.

Good luck!

 

Wanted to reiterate the point about the distributor. When I tried to put mine back in it came out about 30 degrees off. This was due to the pin that goes across the diameter of the bottom of the distributor shaft not properly engaging the slot in the top of the oil pump drive shaft.

What I think happened is that oil pump shaft got rotated just a bit with my first, slightly misaligned, attempt to install the distributor so that the distributor would only go in 1 tooth off. With 13 teeth on the distributor shaft, you get an offset of 360'/13 = 27.7'. I was able to rotate the oil pump shaft back with a big flat blade screwdriver and it all worked perfectly.

Note, all this happened even though the crank was never moved.

 

I made guides with 2 of my old intake bolts that really helped.

I cut the heads off as close to the top as possible and ground chamfers onto the studs. I then threaded them about 1 full turn into the block at the rear passenger and front driver sides. This allowed me to drop the intake right onto the engine without messing up my Permatex beads and worrying about getting stuff lined up. The studs stuck out enough to remove them.

If you aren't planning on purchasing new bolts, I believe the thread pitch is M8x1.25. HTH.

 

THIS is a good idea!

I wish I had thought of doing that when I did my LIM. I should have too as I learned of that trick when doing work on the 289 in my 68 Mustang but I obviously forgot about it. LOL

 

Great tips! Thanks!

 

. I finally started on the intake gasket guys, sorry it's been quite awhile since I started this thread. I'm sure glad I read some of your guys' last tips before I really began cleaning this thing. One question, what if I get a little gunk or grease in the ports? Will a vacuum suck it out just fine? Thanks fellas, Seawolf74

 

Are you referring to the intake ports? If the gunk is soluble in gas and is organic it might not be bad. I would want to keep anything that could go "crunch" out of them. I did my absolute best to plug the intake ports and then used my shop vac to suck out any loose bits/particles.

 

BTW, looks like your LIM gaskets could have gone for another 200,000 miles easy!

 

I wish!