2004 Chevrolet Express 1500 Van V8 5.3L Intake Manifold Gasket Set TRQ SGA11383

Because we're going to have to disconnect the fuel system, we want to take the pressure out of the fuel system. Just take this relay out right here, find the fuel pump relay. Grab that, take that out. And then you can try to start the vehicle. Our vehicle doesn't run right now. So, if you crank the vehicle and then it dies, the fuel system should be unpressurized. Now I'm going to disconnect battery, use an eight-millimeter wrench, loosen up the negative side terminal, and just set that wire aside. Take this cover off, use an eight-millimeter socket, and slide it off.

Take this snorkel off, this little retainer right here, just use a trim tool, slide that off, then loosen up the worm clamp here using eight-millimeter socket, or you can use a straight blade screwdriver, same with this one. Grab the snorkel, slide it back and slide it out. Take this nut off right here, use a 10-millimeter socket. And then these 2 10-millimeter bolts and then that one. And take this cover off and we're going to disconnect the connectors. Disconnect that one right there. It's up the purge solenoid. Disconnect the alternator connector right here.

Slide under the lock and pull it out, and this connector right here, and the MAP sensor as well, disconnect that. And I'm just going to use the bungee cord to just keep the wires out of the way. Just wrapped around the wiper arm. This wire connector right here, just unattach that from the intake, set that aside. Now we have to disconnect all the fuel injectors. There is a lock on them, this one doesn't have that lock on it, but you pull back on the lock and then you push down on that little lock tab, and then slide the connector out. This one does have the lock. So the lock, you just grab the lock and just slide it up, just a little bit, and then you should be able to push on the connector.

Sometimes it's easier to slide the whole lock out. This is how the lock works. So when it's locked in there, this is all the way down. Slide this out, you should be able to slide this out a little bit. You don't have to slide it out that much. That's how it's locked. You should be able to slide-out to there and then push down on the tab and release it. But like I said, sometimes it's easier, just slide this whole thing out. Push it down, slide it out. Do that for all eight of them. Just connect the connector to the throttle body.

Just pull back on this little lock. Once it's back that far, push down on the tab, disconnect it. Now you could leave the throttle body attached. There's just coolant hoses that go to it. So you can either take those hoses off and just leave that all attached, take it all off on the intake, or take the throttle body off. I'm going to use a 10-millimeter socket, take these nuts off, and sometimes the stud comes out completely, that's okay.

Let's get the other two out. You want to be careful with this. It is sensitive, you don't want to drop it. Slide this hose out of the way over here, and disconnect this hose right here, this goes to the valve car. You can either disconnect it down here or up here. And it's been on there for a long time so it's kind of hard to get it loose. Just try to twist it back and forth, screwdriver or trim tool, or something just trying to push on it. This should probably be replaced. The rubber is very dry. Just try not to crack this little port. There we go. See the hose is starting to rip already. Move that to side.

Disconnect this EVAP line, might need a screwdriver or something to push on the tab, it slides up. Now when we take the intake off, since I'm not pulling the injector rail up, we're just going to have to fit this through there. So just keep that in mind. And back here, disconnect this line that goes to the valve cover, pump that up. You could disconnect it up here if you wanted to. Just put that out of the way. Now, if you weren't able to bleed the pressure off the fuel system, like I showed you earlier, taking the relay out and cranking it, just take the cap off right here.

Take some rags and a screwdriver. And you're just going to push on this Schrader valve. Just be careful, it's good idea to wear safety glasses while you're doing this. And just release the pressure, there wasn't a lot of pressure in this one. But sometimes they spray pretty good. It's good to cap back on so I don't lose it. Now we'll disconnect the fuel line. Just pull this lock off, just slide it up, and then pull it out. You're going to need a special fuel line release tool, slide this over the pipe, pull the line forward, and then push the tool into the line.

And once the tool is in the right spot, you should be able to pull the line back. Just like that, pop it off. Now you going to take the intake bolts out. There's one there, one there, one there and then there's two in the back on this side, on the opposite side, there's two in the front, one in the middle, and then two further back. So there's 5 per side, 10 in total. I'm going to use an eight-millimeter socket, it helps to use a wobble socket or a swivel socket. And it's a good idea not to use an electric tool with the gas being out, you don't want to cause any sparks.

So I'm just going to use an air tool. All right, all those bolts are loose. Just grab the intake, slide it up. Just remember, this hose has to go underneath the fuel rail over here. And just slide it through there. Be careful, it is plastic, you don't want to crack it. And when you go back in, you're going to have to feed that through there again and slide it up. So it's pretty dirty under here. I want to clean some of this up. I don't want any of this stuff to fall into the intake ports. What you could do is put a rag in each one of those ports, and then clean it all up if that's what you want to do.

Or just be careful. And you don't really want to use an electric vacuum on this because the potential of getting some of the fuel in there and then catching the vacuum on fire. So just be careful, all right. So I put rags in all the ports I just need to remember to take those out when I go to put the intake back on. Use a blowgun, just try to blow most of this away. Before I put the intake on, I just wanna take some brake parts cleaner and just clean the surfaces where the intake gasket is going to sit. You don't have to clean all this up. Crystal clear anything but just with a gasket is going to sit make sure that's nice and clean.

You can gently use a razor blade to clean some of this up. Just be careful. You don't want to gouge the metal or you don't want to cut yourself. Take the old gaskets off, there's a little clip right here. It's another clip right here. Then another one on the bottom, take this off. Try not to tip the intake completely upside down. Try to keep it on its side so none of the dirt goes into the ports. And then just take a little rag and some brake parts cleaner, and just wipe around the intake. Then take the new gasket, line it up, and click it into place right there and on the bottom.

Make sure that looks good. Do the same on the other one. Don't forget to take these rags out. You can check all the ports, just look down and make sure there's nothing that went in there. You can always spray a little compressed air. Now when we go to put the intake back on, we have to slide this back through the fuel rail, you could always disconnect it right here, and just put this on the intake, and then reconnect it down there, if that makes it easier for you. I'm gonna take the intake, this line is going to go out through right here.

And then just line it up. Up in this line. Just right back there. And just wiggle the intake a little bit, make sure you didn't crush any of the wires. Make sure this wire is accessible and goes to the knock sensors. You can actually put this. Just attach that right there. And now, so you don't lose that and get all the bolts started. Now I'm just going to snug them down first, there is a sequence to tighten these up.

But I'll snug them down first and then we'll do the torqueing and the sequence after. So number one, I'm going to torque this bolt to 44-inch pounds. And that's the center one on the passenger side. That's number one. Number two is going to be in the center one on the driver's side. Number three is going to be on the driver's side the next one back. On number four from the middle one, the next one forward. Number five from the middle one back one. Number six on the driver's side from the middle forward one. Number seven is the next one forward. Number eight is the passenger side rear one. Number nine is the driver's side rear. And number 10 is passenger side front. So that was all the first pass.

Now you're going to do the same sequence, and you're going to change your torque wrench to 88 inch-pounds, and do the same exact sequence. Now hook up the fuel line to line that up, lock it in place. Make sure that it's good. Ensure you put this lock on, just slides on, and then locks down. That's just going to prevent it from coming off. Now hook up this line or hose right here. It goes to the valve cover and hook this line up over here. And the split, this should be replaced but that'll work for now, and the EVAP line. Just make sure it locks in place. And that's good.

Now check your throttle body gasket if it's crushed. Normally you have to replace it every time but if it looks okay, you can probably try to reuse it. This one looks good. And take the studs, or just the nuts if the studs didn't come out, it goes back on. Now I'm going to torque these to 89 inch-pounds. Now, reposition that coolant hose, those clamps, take the electrical connector, line it up, lock it in place, push down on the lock. It's good. Now we want to plug these injectors back in. Just take the locks, reposition the locks, all those go and plug those in.

Make sure they're secure, they're the same with the other seven. Let's disconnect this bungee cord and run the wires the same way they came out. This bracket is going to go right here. Those wires are going to go like that. You can connect this connector right here. That goes to the knock sensor wire right there. And then this connector is going to go to the MAP sensor in the back right there. Now take this bracket, line that up.

And take the bolts, get those all started. Put it on this bracket right here. That's good. Take these connectors plug in the alternator, and this purge valve, plug down on it and take the snorkel, line it up over the intake or the throttle body. Line this bracket up right here and over the airbox, or mass airflow sensor. Tighten up this one pump right here, snug, and the same right here. Take the cover, line the cover-up in the back. And then get the bolts started. Then tighten it up, snug. Now let's reconnect the battery. Put the negative terminal on and snug it up, and then wiggle it. Make sure it's not loose. You're good to go.

Let's get this cover off of here using our 8-millimeter socket. What we need to do now is remove this right here. To do that, you would loosen this clamp right there using either a flat-head screwdriver or an 8-millimeter. You can come over here, do the same thing, loosen that right up. You don't necessarily need to take them off completely. And then if you were to look right under here, you're going to see where these hoses should be kind of mounted in and held securely. You would just pop that free. Let's start taking this off. Okay. Mine's already free. We'll grab onto this, slide it off. Slide that up and out of here. Now, we're going to get this out of the way. We're going to remove these three 10-millimeter bolts. Let's grab this right back here. Grab that tab, lift it up, and then you should be able to slide it off. Come right over here. Same thing. Lift that tab, slide this off. Set this aside. I'm just going to get this right off of here. I'll just grab my small pocket screwdriver, come right in between here. A little twist, slide that out of there. Now, let's remove this 10-millimeter nut. Grab this, lift it up. Gives us a little bit of slack. Now, we're going to disconnect the wiring for our throttle body assembly. Just come right along here right in between this area and give it a little twist. What we want to do is try to push this gray piece out. That's what's locking this in.

Okay. Press right here. Draw that off. Get this hose off of here. Sometimes you can wiggle them around. You might have to twist it. I'm going to try to press a little bit with my screwdriver. Obviously, I want to be careful not to damage the hose. Get that off of there. Let's continue on to this area right here. You're going to notice there's a little cap. Go ahead and take that off of there. Behind here, you're going to see a Schrader valve. It's almost like a little piton that's going to be sticking out in the center. What we're going to want to do is relieve the fuel pressure that's going to be inside the system. To do that, we're going to press on that centerpiece. You just want to be careful because it's going to be under pressure. You need to have gloves, eye protection. And it's probably a great idea to have a rag around to try to catch the majority of any fluid that might come out. Okay. So, nothing came out of there. That's great. That means that there wasn't any fuel pressure waiting in the system for me, but you definitely want to make sure that you do that anyways. Now, I'm just going to take that cap, put it right back on there because I don't want to lose it. Up along the top of the intake, you're going to see this rubber hose that leads down to a plastic line. Let's go ahead and get that off of there. Give it a little wiggle if you need to. Try to get underneath and just try to break it free.

We need to get this lock off of the fuel line where it connects onto the fuel rail. To do that, I reach my hand in. We need to come through with our small pocket screwdriver, get underneath right here, lift this up. Once you do that, you can slide it forward. Set this aside. To get the hose or the fuel line off of the rest of the fuel rail here, we're going to use this tool. I'm going to use the 3/8 side, which is the bigger side. I'm gonna put it around the line, and then it should go through and it's going to press up against the teeth that you can see inside. I'm going to press this in and just kind of twist it so it works its way along the teeth. If it looks as though yours is very rusted up, you probably want to put some penetrant in there. Now, I'm going to grab that hose, try to give it a little push at the same time as I do this. All right. I just felt the tool go in quite a bit. At this point, I should be able to draw this off. There we are. A little bit of fuel coming out. That's okay. Now it's going to be time to get the fuel injector wiring harness off of here. If you were to look at it, you're going to see a big old plastic piece that's going to look kind of confusing. Why is it like that? Well, if you just take your small pocket screwdriver and press right in this little piece, you can grab onto this lip where my fingers are and draw this up. It's a lock.

Okay. Pull that right up. Now, we're going to go ahead and press on this tab again. Give this a little wiggle and it should want to separate. We're going to do the same to all the fuel injectors. Okay. So, I got the four off over on the passenger side there. And now, I made my way over to the driver side, I'm going to remove the four that are on this side as well. This side might be a little bit harder to get to, but you can do it. I'm going to get the wiring off for this purge valve here. There's a little clippy-do. You can grab onto that. Now, we're going to get this hose off of here. If you were to take your small pocket screwdriver and press right here, you should be able to twist and lift. And that comes right out. Now, we're going to remove our throttle body assembly. You're going to find that there's three mounting nuts, one on top, one on the bottom driver side, and then one on the bottom passenger side as well. Remove all three. Looks like it actually pulled out the whole stud for us. It's not necessarily something to worry about. I'll show you how to put it back in. I'm just gonna see if I can work this off of here. Here we are. We'll just set that aside.

Next, we're going to remove the hose that comes over to here. This just goes right to the backside of the intake. I find that this side's easier to get off. Remove that clamp, grab your hose, give it a little twist to break it free, and then draw it right off. Let's just take a nice rag. We're going to cover the hole for the intake. The next step that we want to do is grab compressed air with a blow gun, and we're going to blow out the dirt that's in between where the intake connects onto the engine itself. Next, we're gonna remove the 10 8-millimeter bolts that hold the intake to the engine. You're going to notice there's five on the passenger side, and then there'll be five more over on the driver side. I'm just gonna grab onto this, try to give it a little wiggle. Try to lift it up. If you feel as though it's sticking in the middle, well, check those bolts. See if they're up all the way. Okay. So, just lifting up now. Just wiggle it around, take a double-check around. Make sure that there isn't anything that you might've happened to miss. You don't want to have any hoses or wiring connected to this in any way. Anything that might pose an issue. Something to remember is as we're starting to lift this up and draw it out, this piece right here has to come through and under this area right here.

So, as we come up, it might want to get caught. This is the area it's going to be stuck. Just go ahead and pull it right through there. Okay. There it is, friends. Now with that intake out of the way, we have a clear view of a big old mess. Any of this stuff that looks like that could be a contaminant that's going to make its way down into the engine. We obviously don't want that to happen. I'm going to grab a vacuum cleaner, you can use whatever you have, clean this out the best you can, and then, of course, you need to take a peek inside of each of these ports to make sure there's no debris in there, clean those out as well. Now, it's going to be time to clean down the engine where the gaskets are going to ride. They're going to be along each one of these ports. Before you go ahead and scrape them down though, take a rag, fold it up, put it inside the port so it'll catch any of the debris that might fall inside. Take a nice flat razor blade, and I always just try to scrape away from the hole. Okay. So, this one looks great. Go ahead and grab onto that rag. I always try to drag it along the engine so I can pull out any of the debris that might've tried getting inside. Continue wiping it down. Now, do the same to all.

We've got the intake over on the bench. The first thing I like to do is make sure no fuel can get out of this line. I'm just going to use a little bit of electrical tape because that's something that I have on hand and most likely everybody does. I'll just kind of tape it up. That's decent enough. Now, once you tilt it up, you'll be able to see where the gaskets are going to be. Obviously, we don't want any of this crowd getting inside there. So, make sure you vacuum it out, get it as cleaned up as possible, and then we'll get the gasket off. Okay. So, we've got that cleaned up decently. Now, if you just grab onto that gasket area, you can see that it tries to lift up and off of there. Right along here, there's going to be an area that latches on, just kind of pry it away. That'll help you along. We have another latch right here, pull that up. And then, of course, there'll be one at the far end as well. We'll get that out of here. Move along. Now, when I clean this up, I like to use that razor blade. When I do it, I'm going to kind of tilt this down like that. That way there, any crumbs or any debris that I happen to peel off of here will fall away and not in.

Be very careful in this area right here. That's the lower portion of your fuel injector. We want to make sure that the gasket area on all these ports is nice and clean. And then, of course, we'll do the same to the other side of the intake. Now, I'm going to take a rag with some parts cleaner directly on it, and I'm going to wipe down the mating surface here. Get it nice and clean. Do the same to all, of course. Now, it looks great. Let's go ahead and turn it over and do the same to the other side. Now that we have this cleaned up, let's go ahead and put on our new gasket here. You can see you've got your little clippies, you got one right there. Set it on here just like that. Click right in. Make sure it's nice and secure. Do the same to the other one. Let's take the knock sensor wire. I'm just gonna go straight towards the back of the engine, around this bracket right here and then up and over and leave it right there. You want to make sure that it's not anywhere near any of these ports because obviously we don't want to put a kink on this and we also don't want to make an issue for the gasket. I got it right here. We've got our hose coming in down at an angle.

Now that we have the intake resting here, we're going to grab onto this. Make sure we put it through there before we go too much further. There we are. Okay. This looks pretty great. Now that we have it semi-lined up, the next thing we need to do is make sure that there's no wiring, there's nothing that could have fallen and has stuck underneath the intake before you start tightening anything down or even studding in those bolts. Just kind of wiggle it around, you should almost kind of feel this want to slide right into place. It's going to go up the thunk and slide right in. If for some reason you notice that it doesn't seem like it's lined up but it doesn't want to slide forward and back, it's probably because one of your bolts right here maybe fell down into one of those ports a little bit and it's causing it not to move. If that's the case, just go ahead and lift up a little bit, wiggle it around, and you should be able to get it lined up. Before you go ahead and tighten any of them down completely, I always try to make sure that I stud them all in at least a few good threads. Now, it's going to be time to bottom out our bolts for the intake. When we do that, we're going to be studding from the center two bolts, and then we're going to work our way out in a criss-cross pattern.

So, I'm going to start with the center on the passenger side here. Okay. Just bottom it out. We're going to be torquing them, so don't worry about overtightening it now. Come from the other side here. Last one number 10. Okay. Let's torque them to manufacturer specifications. Now, we're going to torque down these bolts to 44-inch pounds in the same sequence, starting from the center on the passenger side. Okay. Three is the one directly behind number 2. Let's get number 4. It's going to be the second one from the front here. Number 5 is going to be the one immediately behind that center bolt there. Number 6 is going to be the second one from the front on the driver side. Okay. Number 7, just scoot right up to the forward one. Now, we're going to go number 8, which is all the way in the back on the passenger side. Number 9 is going to be directly across to the back bolt on the driver side. And number 10 all the way in the front on the passenger side. Perfect. Now, we're going to do a second pass. The second pass needs to be torqued to 89-inch pounds. Perfect. Just double-check everything. It looks like we tightened every single bolt all five on each side of the manifold. This looks great. Let's move along.

Like to get the fuel line on ASAP. Give it a nice tug. Make sure you get that lock on there. Slide it through like this. That should slide in, and then you just clip it like this. Give it a nice tug. Make sure it's completely locked in. Let's grab the wiring for that knock sensor. Bring this up here. We're gonna put it right up onto there where it's supposed to sit. Make sure it's all the way on and it's nice and secure. Go ahead and connect it in. I always like to give them a tug, make sure that they can't come disconnected. If that comes sliding off, you could try to pinch this down a little bit. There we go. Now I got it that time. That feels good. This is definitely not coming off. Let's get this sensor plugged in. Connect that in. Let's grab this hose. It's going to go underneath the wiring harness and then right onto here. Give it a nice tug, make sure it's secured. Now, we can grab onto this. We'll just kind of pull it and we're going to line up the hole with the piece right here, should slide down, and the wires should fall right into where they need to be. Let's get the nut on for there. Let's get this plate back on there. The two-bolt holes go towards the front and the one goes towards the rear. Grab this, connect it right in. Grab this, should push right on. Give them a nice tug. Those feel great.

Let's get this hose back on here. Make sure you fix that clamp so it's situated properly, a little bit further. Give your hose a nice tug and make sure it's completely secured. Over on the other side, let's go ahead and get this hose back reattached. Awesome. Let's move along to the fuel injectors now. You have the area with a little piton. That's going to be facing towards the front if you're on the passenger side and it'll be facing towards the rear on the driver side. I'm gonna go ahead and put that down on there. Make sure it clicks in, give it a nice wiggle, and a nice little tug. You have to make sure that these are completely latched in. If they're loose, you're going to have a runnability issue. Don't forget about the lock. Let's put that back on there as well. You see how this opens up? That's going to slide right over this area here and then this area is going to slide right down in between. Push it so it pushes in that tab and push it right by it. That should lock it in. Give it a nice tug one more time, make sure it's completely latched in. This is super important. Do the same to all four on this side and then do the same to the four on the driver side. Now, when it comes time to put your throttle body back on, if for some reason when you tried to remove the nut, the stud came out, don't worry too much. What I would do is I would use the proper Torx bit that fits on there and then use a 10-millimeter wrench and loosen this up. You don't need to remove the nut fully though. Just loosen it up a couple of good threads.

Let's do that real quick. Okay. So, I loosened that a couple of threads. I'm going to do the same to all of them that came out just like this. Once I do, I'm going to put the throttle body back onto here after I replace the gasket, and then we'll go ahead and tighten up the center. We're going to torque that to manufacturer specifications, and then we'll go ahead and torque up the nut afterward. Next, I would take a nice razor blade and I would clean up the area where the seal's going to ride right on the throttle body. Now I'm just gonna go like that, give a nice scraping. Obviously, we don't want to chisel up the metal in any way, we're just trying to get off any of the leftover residue stuff around here. Make sure you clean out any of the gunk that you might've gotten inside the throttle body area. The next thing we're going to do is make sure we have all this cleaned out in here. And then something that I always like to mention is it's a great idea and it's highly recommended to replace the gasket that goes between your intake and your throttle body before you reinstall. If you don't have access to a new gasket, what you should do is at least make sure you clean it down and inspect it. Make sure that there's no cracks or it's not torn anywhere and give it a little squeeze. Make sure it still feels soft. If it feels dry and brittle and you can't feel any squish, you really should replace the gasket.

This one seems fine. So, I'm just gonna clean it down. Like I said, I would highly recommend replacing it though. Now, once you've either replaced or cleaned and inspected the seal, we can go ahead and put this back over. Okay. That feels good. Now, I'm going to take my stud with my loosened nut, stud it in there. I'm going to stud in the other one as well, we'll get them both studded, and then we'll snug them up and torque them to manufacturer specifications. Now, we're going to torque the studs, the ones that got removed at least, to 53-inch pounds. It's gonna be time to go ahead and put these nuts on there. That one's studded on. Once you have them all bottomed out, go ahead and torque those nuts to 89-inch pounds. Let's get this connected back in here to the throttle body. Make sure you press in on your lock. That should lock it in, give it a nice tug, make sure it doesn't come free. Now, it's going to be time to get the air inlet back on here. Just put it down just like this, you can start in the side that goes over to the air filter box if you want. Take this one, slide it down in there, and then push it right onto the throttle body. That feels great. Let's go ahead and tighten these up. Okay. Just take a look. If you have this and you can attach it back in to secure it, it's great idea. Lock that in. Double-check everything, make sure that it's nice and secure and it definitely can't come free anywhere.

Let's get our engine cover back on. We're going to slide the backside in so it connects into the hooks and just drop this down. Now, you would just tighten up your mounting nut up here, mounting bolt. Give it a nice wiggle. Perfect. Okay. Double-check everything. All our wiring's in, nice and secured. Perfect. The next thing you would want to do is start up the vehicle, let it run for a little while, take it for a road test. Make sure the engine runs right. If it does, you're doing all right.