How to Replace Intake Manifold 1998-2007 Ford Crown Victoria

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In this video we're going to be working with a 2004 Ford Crown Victoria with a 4.6L V8. We're going to be showing you how to remove and replace your vehicle's upper intake manifold, which is the plastic portion of the manifold, that also has some cooling components in it that are prone to cracking and leaking. Fortunately, 1A Auto carries this part and installing it yourself is something that can easily be done in the driveway.

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Here are the items you'll need for this repair: flat blade screwdriver, full metric socket set, ¼ ratchet, 3/8 ratchet, socket extensions, full metric wrench, M-8 allen bit, drain pan, jack, jack stands, groove jaw pliers, 5/8 quick disconnect tool, paper towels, gloves, safety glasses, rust penetrant, brake cleaner, wire brush, thread sealant, coolant, funnel, torque wrench

To show you why we're changing our intake manifold here, this is very common problem. You can see, all this damp coolant right here at the bottom on this flange. Now it could be the gasket to the bottom of this, which we'll have to remove the intake to replace anyway. Or it's possible that there's a crack in the plastic of the manifold, which is very common on these as well. Either way, we sell this part as a complete assembly. Since it's all coming out anyway, we're going to switch it all over while we're in there.

To relieve the fuel system pressure in a Ford Crown Vic, as well as a variety of other Ford Vehicles, you could remove the fuel pump relay. However, if you don't know where it is, or you're having a hard time finding it, behind this panel, on the driver's side of your trunk is your inertia switch. This is designed to shut off your fuel pump. If the vehicle is in a collision, or the rear gets hit, simply pop that tab up with a small, flat blade screwdriver, through that access hole, and it'll cut off our fuel pump.

Start the vehicle and let it run until it stalls. When the vehicle stalls, the pressure in the fuel system has been relieved and we can now work on it safely without spraying gas everywhere. Your battery is located at the front passenger side of your engine bay. Using an 8mm, or a 5/16 wrench, loosen the clamp on the negative side of the terminal, wiggle it loose. Once you've removed the negative battery terminal, isolate it away from the battery so it doesn't accidentally reconnect while we're working.

Using an open drive on the end of a 1/4 inch ratchet extension, loosen up this screw at the center of the engine cover, lift it up, slide forward and remove it from the vehicle. Disconnect the electrical connector on your mass airflow sensor, release the two clips securing the air box lid down, lift up and push down to the center of the vehicle to release it, remove the two breather hoses up by the throttle body and using a flat blade screwdriver, loosen and remove the intake boot clamp here at the throttle body, wiggle that boot and remove from the vehicle.

Before removing your serpentine belt, be sure that the path is indicated somewhere in the engine bay. Either on the original sticker, like ours has here. If yours is missing, simply take a marker or paint pen and draw one somewhere under the hood. Using the open end drive of a 3/8 ratchet, place it into the square inlet on the serpentine belt tensioner and rotate clockwise. Remove the belt from the pulley, carefully release the tension, remove your ratchet and take your belt off the rest of the way.

It's a little tricky to get it off this idler pulley here so be careful not to cut it on this piece of steel. The rest should come off pretty easily. Your alternator is located here, at the top of the engine, dead center. To remove we'll pry it up a little because this connector's stuck. You may be able to do this by hand, but lift up on that tab and remove it. Lift up on the boot for the power lead and remove the 10mm nut underneath. We'll do this using a 10mm socket and ratchet. Remove the power lead. Regardless of whether we're replacing the alternator or just removing it to get it out of our way for another job, we'll reinstall that nut in there just to make sure we don't lose it. Remove the four 10mm bolts at the top of the alternator, going back to the intake manifold as a stiffener. We'll crack all of these loose with our 10mm socket and ratchet and remove them and the plate the rest of the way by hand.

We'll also need to just pop this connector off of our power lead and lay that off to the side. Using a 10mm socket and ratchet, I've used a longer ratchet here than we did before because there's a lot more torque on these, we'll remove the two 10mm bolts at the bottom of the alternator. You may need a small extension to help get your socket post the water pump pulley for the driver's side lower alternator bolt. You don't have to remove the two bottom 10mm bolts as these are notched on the alternator and you can simply slide it up once they're loose. Once the bolts are loose, you can lift up and slide the alternator off of them to remove it from the vehicle.

Your radiator cap is located at the front of the engine bay on the passenger side, right in line with the passenger side engine bank. Simply unscrew that and place it somewhere dry and safe. Raise and support your vehicle. We're using a lift to make it easier to show you what's going on but this could easily be done at home with a jack and jack stands. Under your vehicle, on the front driver's side, we have a coolant drain here. I happen to have a piece of hose lying around that fits over it. If you do too I recommend using it to put into your drain bucket to make this process a lot cleaner and easier.

We'll then use a 19mm socket and ratchet to open up our drain. Once your coolant's finished draining, go ahead and tighten down that drain plug. You could just be able to snug this by hand because that's just plastic, we don't want to break it using a wrench. Once we refill our cooling system we'll clean this off and double check for leaks. Using a pair of pliers, collapse the clamp on your upper radiator hose and set it into its hook so it'll stay open like that. Work it off and slide it down the hose.

This is probably stuck on there pretty good, as you can tell. There's a few different tricks to remove these but one my favorites is to get a big pair of pliers, like these groove jaw pliers we have here. Clamp it on to the hose and twist. Now, you don't want to bite it too hard or you're going to tear the hose. You do want to get enough grip to make it rotate a little. It can take some time but just keep working it back and forth, like that. Before we remove this, I've already done it but you're going to want to make sure you have a drain bucket underneath your vehicle. Even though we drained our cooling system it still tends to pool up in places, which means we could have another leak and a mess that we need to contain.

Remove the two 10mm bolts with a socket and ratchet. Remove your thermostat housing. Our thermostat's a little stuck so we'll take a flat blade screwdriver, put it in the top there, and just help pop it up.

Remove the cables on the side of the throttle body. To do this, the outer one here, simply rotate, just to get a little better leverage on it, and lift up. It's just on a little slotted tab there. Once that's removed, we'll keep our throttle body pushed in with our thumb. Slide the end of the wire around to this notch, and slide the cable through. Release the tension on the throttle body and unhook the spring. There's not a lot of tension on this so you should be able to just pop that off by hand. Remove the two 10mm bolts on the top of the throttle cable retainer bracket. Alternatively, you could remove the two cables separately but this is just as simple. It's just a matter of preference.

Then, because we're removing so many parts here and we want to stay organized, I'll just put those two bolts in back a couple of threads so they don't fall out and we know exactly what hardware goes where when we put it all back together. Follow the throttle cable around and remove it from the retainers on the EGR heat shield, as well as down here next to the throttle body. These are just little plastic retainers so just kind of spread them with your fingers, and then pop them out. Carefully feed the cables and the bracket out of the way. You can feed them back and lay them over the side or you can simply push them back toward the firewall like we're going to do here. Again, there's multiple ways of getting the same results.

Remove the coolant feed line to the throttle body deicer, squeeze the clamp, move it back, wiggle the end with your pliers to free it up and then pop it off. Just push that up, out of the way for now. We also have vacuum line here. Same thing, there's no clamp on this. We're just going to grab it, wiggle it to free it up, pop it off. Remove the two 10mm bolts on the EGR tube heat shield. There's one here, by the idle air control valve and another one on the other side, closer to the actual EGR valve.

Remove the EGR tube heat shield from the vehicle. Once again, I'm going to throw those bolts back in a couple of threads. Stay organized, remember where everything's going. EGR components are constantly getting hot and cold and are much more prone to rust and seizure that other parts in the vehicle. Much like exhaust parts and exhaust manifolds. We're going to spray some penetrating oil. I've put a paper towel under there to contain the mess on the back where it slides around the tube. As well as the threads where it goes into the EGR valve. Using the appropriate size wrench, which we don't have. I believe it is an inch and a 16th. Possibly a 27 or a 28mm, you are going to remove this flare nut that goes into the EGR valve. However, in a pinch, a nice pair of groove jaw pliers, should be able to bite on there enough to loosen it up. Be sure when you're loosening this, that the nut is turning but the tube is not. If the tube's turning, use more heat and more penetrating oil because twisting that tube around is just going to break it and add a lot more to your job.

Disconnect all of the connections on the EGR valve. We have a black vacuum line at the top, red one below that. Be very careful as those are plastic vacuum lines and you want to be sure not to crack them if they've become brittle. Disconnect the electrical connector. Disconnect the large vacuum port, wiggle it with some pliers if you need to. This is on the front of the throttle body assembly here, on the elbow.

Disconnect the large breather hose here, next to the vacuum port. Just rotate that out of the way. Disconnect the electrical connectors for the throttle position sensor. As well as the idle air control and hang them off to the side. You can't get these mixed up because one is just a two pin connector while the other is a three so they're only going to go on one way. Remove the five 8mm bolts securing the throttle body and elbow assembly onto the top of your intake manifold. Once all five bolts are out, remove the assembly from your vehicle.

The fuel rail inlet is here. Pop this safety tab off, make sure yours is on a retainer and it's going to hang, if not, place it somewhere safe. Be sure to wear proper safety equipment, especially for this step and the following ones involving the fuel rail. This is a quick disconnect line tool that simply slides over. Push your fuel line in and pull the quick disconnect into it and you'll feel it set into place. Once it sets into place, push from the connector and pull the line out. You can mark all of these electrical connectors if you'd like to but they are all different and locked out in different places. You shouldn't be able to mix them up.

Remove the cooling temp sensor and this three pin connector on this little vacuum modulator here, at the end of the fuel rail. Again, a matter of preference. I'm going to disconnect all of these vacuum connections down here at this valve because then I can leave them all attached to the fuel rail and take it all out as one piece, which makes it a lot less confusing to put back together later. We'll then right down and disconnect all of our injectors, ignition coils. These connectors are completely different and tied together so you shouldn't be able to cross them or plug them in the wrong order or onto the wrong part.

There are four ignition coils and four fuel injectors on either side. We'll also need to disconnect this ground clip and then remove the two 8mm bolts on our fuel rail. Remove the two 15mm bolts on this heat shield. We have one up top here, nice and easy to see and another one down under the harness that's a little more difficult to see. When I remove it, you'll see where the ratchet is, you should be able to find it, no problem. There are a couple of ways you can choose to do this. You can disconnect the retainers, holding the harness onto this heat shield. Or you can simply lift it up and just move it out of the way. Pop this retainer for the alternator harness off of the bolt and then we'll run right down the line again and disconnect all of our injectors and ignition coils. We'll then remove our two 8mm bolts.

Now, in removing the fuel rail, we want to grab each injector, and pop them up and out of the intake manifold. We'll then remove the fuel rail with all the injectors still attached from the vehicle. Using a 7mm socket and ratchet, remove the bolt to the ignition coil and then pop the ignition coil right out. We'll repeat this step on the remaining seven coils. You can mark these to make sure they go back in the same cylinder if you'd like. However, as long as they all work, it's really just an unnecessary step but some people like to keep them in place. If that's how you want to do it you just a paint marker and just throw a number on each one so you know which cylinder they go to and everything goes back in. Compress the clamp on the end of the coolant hose at the back of the intake. It looks like ours is just going to slide up nice and easy. You might have to move the clamp and then wiggle the hose as we've had to with many of the other ones. Since it's not dripping we'll just hang it out of the way.

We'll then go on to remove the remaining eight 10mm bolts from the intake manifold. We have five on the passenger's side, right in a row. Three remaining on the driver's side. Lift up, carefully remove the intake manifold from the vehicle. You want to watch out because we have a lot of loose wires hanging around. We also have a little retainer on the back of our harness it looks like, that we need to pop off. Which is why we take this slow because we don't want to risk jerking and breaking something like that. Remove your intake manifold from the vehicle.

Here we have our old intake manifold that we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. Now, this part still has some coolant and fuel and such in it, so I'm not going to move it around too much. You can see that we have all the same bolt locations on it. I even have all the hardware in place on the old intake manifold. It comes with all new gaskets for the throttle body. As well as, where it bolts on to the lower plenum and into the head. You could see the intake shape and design is exactly the same and we have the same cooling jacket up here at the front. This does have some different ports in it as well as some different openings because these manifolds fit a wide variety of the 4.6L Fords.

We will need to change over our coolant temp sensor here. It comes with a bunch of new hardware, which will allow us to block off this port, which isn't needed for our particular application. It also comes with a brand new thermostat, which is a great thing to change any time you lower your cooling level. Just because, it's a cheap part and it's a great thing to take care of while you're in there to make sure that your repair goes smoothly. It also comes with some stiffening brackets. These may not be applicable to your particular vehicle but again, this kit fits a wide variety of the 4.6L motors, so it does come with some extra parts, as well as some universal parts that are going to fit various applications.

Don't be afraid if you have some extra parts left over or some things you didn't use. These are very prone, and our motor did it, to cracking here and creating a coolant leak. If you're having this problem, or any other cracks or issues with your intake manifold, this new part from 1A Auto is going to go in direct fit just like your original equipment and fix you up right.

Now, we'll remove the gaskets and clean the mating surfaces. You want to put some paper towels down into all the intake runners to make sure that we don't have any dirt and debris fall down into them. You want to kind of try to keep a cup shape. It's not going to be perfect but the closer you keep it to that cup shape, make sure that everything's still touching. Then when we remove this we can just grab the edges, pull up and bring all that dirt and debris up and out with it. We'll then remove the old gaskets. We'll now use some break clean and a paper towel to wipe all the dirt and debris off of the gasket surfaces. Want to make sure you get this nice and clean so that our gaskets seal on there nice.

Just to show you a comparison, while this side looks a lot cleaner than it did when we started, this is nowhere near clean enough to get a good seal with our new gaskets. What you really want to do is get them nice and clean, like this side over here. While this still isn't perfect because we do have some pitting and corrosion from the various fluids and chemicals that come in contact with these surfaces, you can see the old outline of our gasket rings are perfectly clean and clear, so we'll get a nice good seal back onto our engines. Once the surfaces are nice and clean, pinch the tops of your towels together to keep any debris inside. See why we do that? All the debris that came out of that one.

Now we'll use these paper towels, since they're already dirty, we'll wipe up any coolant and dirt and debris that's down in the valley of our engine. We also have some broken plastic pieces here from our intake we're going to want to get out. All of these things are hazardous like the coolant getting through this opening and down into our torque converter and flex plate could cause rust and other issues. Whereas all this fuel from removing the injectors, as well as these leaves and other debris down here could present potential fire hazard that we don't want to risk. We've got it open so we might as well clean it out.

Before installing your new intake manifold, be sure that all of the integrated gaskets, as you could see here, are properly seated and in good condition. This is a little different than the piece we removed, which had its own gasket. These integrated ones are going to be a lot easier to work with and they're going to seal a lot better. Lift the old intake manifold up and out of this piece of sound deadening here, which we'll then set out new intake manifold into, just drops in there.

I'm going to leave all my old hardware in this intake manifold for now, just to keep it out of the way, make it a little less distracting. As we go along, you can see things like the coil hold down bolts are a little bit different, it actually comes with some screws in the hardware bag supplied with your new kit that we'll be using for that. Everything else, I know where the bolts go and as I need them I'll remove them from this manifold and install them here just to keep things clean, easy and organized.

Carefully lower your new intake manifold back into place. We'll now take all of our 10mm hardware, we'll just get those started in by hand for now, just a couple of turns to make sure that everything lines up and seats nicely. Make sure that nothing is pinched under the manifold, that it's fully seated, before we start tightening anything down. Go ahead and snug all the bolts down with a 10mm socket and ratchet. Jump around a little from front to back and side to side when doing this to make sure the manifold sits down evenly. However, we're not going to get them tight yet because we will need to torque them. When installing an intake manifold like this, torque sequence is just as important as the torque specification. In this particular case, it's going to be 18 foot-pounds or 25 newton meters. We're going to use our torque wrench and a 10mm socket and the pattern I follow here is going to be very important to making sure our manifold sits and seals correctly.

We'll start with the second bolt from the front on the driver's side. We'll then do the middle bolt on the passenger's side. Then we'll go one bolt back from there. Front bolt on the driver's side. The one directly opposite it on the passenger's side. We'll then go to the rear most driver's side bolt. The rear most passenger's side bolt. The front most passenger's side bolt. The last bolt in the sequence is going to be the second to rear most on the driver's side, which is actually the long 15mm bolt that goes through our heat shield so we'll torque that down then.

Remove the cap that comes on your new manifold and install the cooling line. Remember to compress the spring clamp while reinstalling and release. Reinstall all of your ignition coils. Our new intake manifold comes with new plastic screws for the ignition coils. Be sure to use those. They still use the same 7mm socket and ratchet.

Reinstall your fuel rail. Give a little push over all the injectors to make sure that they seat in properly. Reinstall all four of your 8mm fuel rail hold down screws. Once those bolts are tightened down, reconnect all of your electrical connectors. Remember the gray ones are for fuel injectors, and the larger black connectors are for your ignition coils.

We also need to reconnect retainer for our alternator connector wire there. We also have to reconnect this vacuum modulator over here. Don't worry about the coolant temp sensor connector just yet, because we do have to change that over from the other side. We also have our ground connection, which sits on the rear fuel rail stud here. As well as the vacuum fitting that connects to all the other vacuum lines here in this little harness. We can then take our fuel supply line, just put it in until it clicks, make sure it doesn't come off and then reengage the safety.

This could've been done in the vehicle easily, just this same way. However, I didn't remove the coolant temp sensor when I took the manifold out. I'm just going to use a 19mm wrench now, spin it out, so we can put it in our new intake.

Now we use a wire brush to clean all the old dirt and debris off of the threads of the coolant temp sensor. Apply some thread sealant onto the threads of the sensor. You only need to go 3/4 of the way around here, you don't have to cover the whole thing and reinstall the sensor. Some people will use RTV Gasket Maker, or Teflon Tape for this. That does work in certain situations but thread sealer really is the right stuff for the job. Tighten your sensor back in, your 19mm wrench. You can also use a socket and ratchet. I like to use a wrench because I can see how close I'm getting to the sensor. I don't want to risk breaking it. Don't worry if it doesn't thread all the way in, just thread it in until it stops and reconnect the electrical connector.

We'll now install the M8 Allen plug with an M8 Allen socket and a ratchet. This plug is included with our kit. Since we don't use this port for our application, we just want to seal it off, and close it up. Reinstall the heat shield bracket here on the driver's side. Be sure to line up both bolts for tightening either one down. This long 15 goes at the top and will be the last bolt to help tighten down our intake manifold. This shorter one with the threaded ends will sit down on the back side of the motor. Be sure to reconnect the wire harness to it's bracket if you disconnected it. You want to get both of these bolts lined up first before you tighten either one down where there's only two points of contact. Makes it very easy for this to get misaligned.

Remember, since this is one of the intake manifold bolts, this long 15 at the top will also need to be torqued to 18 foot-pounds. Clean off the gasket surface on the throttle body elbow the same way you did on the manifold. Ours doesn't look that bad so I just wiped it off real quick with a clean rag. Reinstall the throttle body elbow and all it's related parts onto the top of the intake manifold. Reinstall your five 8mm screws to then tighten down with our 8mm socket and ratchet. Again, make sure that the alignment goes smoothly. We want to put all of them in hand tight first. Reinstall the EGR tube into the EGR valve. Again, if you have the appropriate wrench, tighten it up with that. We don't, so we're going to get it as tight as we can with a pair or groove jaw pliers. You could also use a small pipe wrench on this or another type of adjustable wrench.

Reinstall the EGR tube heat shield over top. Again, our new part supplies two 7mm plastic screws for this in place of the bolts we had in there, on the original manifold. These will work just fine. I'll tighten them down with a 7mm socket ratchet and extension. Reconnect the electrical connector on your EGR valve and the vacuum fittings. Remember red on the bottom, black one on the top. We'll then reconnect the vacuum line on our throttle body and swing the breather hose from the valve cutter back on there as well. Route the throttle and cruise control cables back around and lock them back into their retainers.

Reinstall the 10mm bolts in the retainer bracket. Tighten those back down with your 10mm socket and ratchet. Open your throttle body by hand, insert the pin and rotate the throttle cable into it's channel, allow it to line back up. Snap the cruise control cable back into place and reinstall the return spring by hand. Reconnect this breather vacuum hose here, as well as the coolant icer hose here. Use your pliers to slide that clip back into place. Reconnect the three pin throttle position sensor harness and the two pin idle air control harness at the back. Install your new thermostat followed by the new O-Ring.

Place your thermostat housing back on. Make sure that it goes on there nice and straight. Tighten down both 10mm bolts. We'll do this first with a socket and ratchet and then torque it to 18 foot-pounds.

Reinstall the upper radiator hose to the thermostat housing. Set the clamp back into place and if yours locked together like ours did just give it a quick pop with a flat blade screwdriver. It should spring right back into place. Don't forget to relocate this stud from the old manifold to the new one with a 10mm socket and ratchet. It's not critical but it is part of keeping the engine cover on this particular model. If yours has it, you'll want to be sure to switch it over. This is located in a straight line behind the coolant temp sensor. It's going to be the only opening left in our intake manifold. We'll just tighten that back down until it bottoms up. Reinstall your alternator onto the studs. Reinstall that top bracket. We'll start these screws in finger tight. We'll then tighten down the backs fully. Once the rear bolts on the top bracket are in place, we'll tighten down the bottom bolts. We'll then tighten up the two 10mm top bolts and reconnect the electrical connector as well as our power lead. Tighten the 10mm nut with your socket and ratchet, reinstall the boot.

Install the serpentine belt first around the harmonic balancer with a crank pulley. Make sure that it's seated on there fully. We'll now take the passenger's side of the belt, route it under my water pump, back up over top of the water pump. From here, it'll go over the top my tensioner pulley, under my AC compressor on the bottom passenger side, through this tight little gap here and over the idler pulley. I'll then go to the bottom driver's side and route the belt around my power steering pump. I'll put some tension on it by hand, make sure that everything is seated properly on its pulley's. Then use the drive of a 3/8 ratchet and the square opening of the tensioner and turn that clockwise to relieve the pressure and install my serpentine belt over the top of my alternator before releasing the pressure and removing my ratchet.

Reinstall the intake boot onto your throttle body and tighten the clamp back down with a flat blade screwdriver. You can also use, I believe, it's a 8mm socket and ratchet on the hex of this clamp as well. Reconnect the IAC and breather hoses. One is larger than the other so they'll only go in one way. Push the air box lid down and it until it seats fully back on its hooks. Push the lid down, snap both clamps back into place, reconnect the mass airflow sensor.

Reinstall your engine cover by sliding it back over the hooks in the front and placing it over the stud at the top. Reinstall the nut and tighten it down with a 1/4 inch drive extension. Reconnect the negative battery terminal and tighten it back down with your 5/16 or 8mm wrench. There's no need to crank these down, just go on there until it's nice and snug. Push down fully on your inertia switch to reengage it.

Refill your vehicle's coolant. With the radiator cap off and your coolant system filled, start the vehicle. To prime your fuel system, turn the key to run position without starting the car, and allow the fuel pump to turn on and off. When it turns off, shut your key off, repeat the cycle two more times and then start the vehicle. Set it to vent heat on the lowest fan setting, just so you can feel it and keep an eye on your engine's coolant level.

Once our cooling system opens up, meaning that our thermostat and allowed the flow of coolant through our engine block and heater core, which is why we have the heat on to allow coolant through the heater core, this level will drop. We'll need to keep it topped off and wait for it to finish bubbling and settling so we know all the air is out of our system by driving our vehicle. Once your vehicle has finished bleeding, be sure to top your coolant level back up. Remove your funnel and reinstall the cap.

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