Another CIS Question - gasket replacement

[VincentVega]

Hello guys

I've read through countless posts and articles and still have a couple questions about my CIS issues. First, here are a couple symptoms: removing oil cap causes the car to stall, warm idle is low, car sounds like it has a 'big cam' and spraying carb cleaner at various joints on the injection system causes the idle to increase.

I'm pretty sure I have at least 1 substantial vacuum leak. I it's easier to replace all the gaskets/hosese with the engine out, but I'm trying to avoid that. Several posts mention using the right combination of swivels/extensions lets you get the runners off the heads with the engine still in the car. Is this realistic? I dont want to turn this into a 'while your in there' job, so I really only want to replace the gaskets/hoses and hopefully get the car runner smooth again.

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Chris
-81 SC

[marcesq]

Sorry Mate . . . . . drop it

See you in a couple of weeks.

[911Mac]

Chris,

I just happen to have pulled the airbox and CIS out of my 82 SC getting ready to install Tony's CIS to EFI conversion kit.
If you're planning on replacing the rubber connections between the intake runners and the air box, pretty much everything has to come out. It's very doable with the engine in the car, you can get to the engine intake nuts fairly easily on the left side. On the right side I took off the rear most intake runner, then the aux air regulator. At that point I could remove all the nuts and washers. Note that I had already removed the lines to the fuel distributer and the injectors. I used a short 3/8" drive socket attached to universal joint attached to a long extension.
There are a lot of fuel lines and hoses back there. What I found needed replacing on my car, 138K miles, were the fuel injector sleeves and o-ring, the vaccum hose from the decel valve to the throttle body to the cruise control (it has a T fitting back behind the airbox which should be interesting to replace).
If I were you, I'd try to pinpoint the places where you've got problems and address them. Here's a picture of the back of my airbox with some of the plumbing, it should look just like yours. You can see the connector for the vaccum line that's T'd to the other components low on the throttle body.

[Doug E]

Chris - good luck on getting it apart in the car. My vote would be to drop it as well.

There's one particular runner up near the oil cooler that the only way I could get off was going in on-top of the cooler with a swivel and remember that was with the engine out of the car.

If you go for it everything is 13mm.

Heck, maybe we could drop it between run sessions on 4/9

[911Mac]

Chris,

Sorry about the last picture. I tried to attach two pictures and must have overlayed the one I wanted you to see. I'll try again. Also need to set the camera resolution down a bit.

[VincentVega]

Thanks guys, great info. Sounds like I have a plan now. 1) plan on a drop, ie. line up 'the pallet' and so on 2) give it the ol' college try first. After 3-4 hours of work I'll make the call to drop or not.

Of course, this is after the easter weekend DE. Any NoVa guys wanna cross the bridge into MD for some beer and dogs?

[Thack]

You might want to lower the engine or do what is called a "partial engine drop". You just lower the engine but do not remove it. If you are going to remove the engine you have to lower it anyway. So when you get to the point where the engine is lowered and the last step is to disconect it from the trans, try to take the CIS off. You can use small mirrors to "see" the rear of the engine.

[VincentVega]

Exactly what I was thinking. I fear that I'll convince myself to rebuild the engine if it's outta the car for more than a couple hours. Besides, I should have done this in January when it was well, January.

[David]

I've pulled the injection system off a '78 SC a couple of times with the engine in. It's difficult but certainly possible. You almost have to have a 12mm (or is it 13mm?) universal jointed socket to remove the #6 cylinder runner nut (and don't drop them down the intake!!!!). Be sure and cover the intake ports as soon as possible as the intake comes off.

The one big downside to doing this with the engine in, is that if the runners are a little off with the new rubber boots you can't (or won't want to) remove the system again to realign the runners. You might end up with some twist in the rubber boots as a result.

[VincentVega]

Good point David. I'll try to mark the runners with a scribe, that is, if I get them off.