I just finished an intake manifold gasket replacement on a 1997 4X4 Blazer. Everything worked out fine - but when I fired it up, I sprayed fuel all over EVERYTHING. Fortunately I got it shut off with no sparks.

Man, that system has pressure. I bet it pumped out more than a gallon of fuel in 10 seconds. Mucho kitty litter to soak it up, and a big ol' fan moving air through the garage all night have helped a great deal.

It appears that the problem is the ends of the fuel lines aren't fully seated into the upper mainfold. They need to go in farther...but I don't wanna force them.

Is there a trick to getting them in far enough to seal properly? Just lots of wiggling, pushing and cursing??

 

I lubed up the o-rings on mine with some motor oil to make reassembly easier. Where you able to get the retention strap between the feed & return lines bolted back on?

Also, there are 2 o-rings separated by a spacer. I find it MUCH easier to just replace these o-rings whenever things are apart. Problem is the only way I could purchase them was to buy the o-ring kit from the dealership to the tune of like $40 (IIRC). The two o-rings were not the same material.

 

Yup, I got the retention strap snugged down - but after the leak, I see that the top O-rings are clear of the upper manifold. I suspect I didn't have them seated and managed to wedge them apart with the strap.

Also, memory says that the flat surface of the strap was UP when it came off - I could only get it back on with the flat side down. That's another reason I think I screwed up.

Can you get your lines far enough out to change O-rings without taking them loose at the connection near the firewall? To get those connections loose, I have to pull the distributor in order to get room to swing the tubing wrench.

 

Heck, I re-o-ringed my whole SCFI spider without loosening the lines from the back, but given the choice to do it again, I'd have much rather taken it apart at the firewall than to screw around like I did.

And yeah, the flat side has to be up. The lower side is supposed to be down to hold everything in... That tells me that you didn't get it together properly.

 

Well, at least I didn't blow up my garage. That would have been a bit too exciting!

And that is a pretty miserable job, at least the first time. I think it took me a total of about 20 hours. But taking it apart was the worst (as is usually the case). Once I started putting things back together, it only took about 4 hours to button it up.

 

Problem FINALLY solved.

I tried again and again to get those fuel lines to seat in the top of the intake manifold fuel spider. I couldn't get them in UNTIL I bought new O-rings (they come in a $32 kit from the Chevy dealer..ouch) and pulled all the old parts off. I think the old O-rings had swelled up just enough that they didn't want to go back in.

Even then, I had to insert the bottom O-ring into each recess and put the matching washer on top of it before doing anything else. I mounted the plastic spacers and the top (bright yelloe) O-ring on the fuel lines, and then I was finally able to wiggle and force the connection home. Seemed like having the bottom O-rings and washers already in the holes really helped.

BTW - it didn't hurt that I removed the bolt holding the fuel line bracket to the rear of the intake manifold. That aided my ability to move the lines around enough to change the O-rings and get them properly positioned.