Corbic

Ok, so the other night, coolant light comes on. I get home, pop the hood and start browsing with the flash light. Car did not over heat, and I have a pool of coolant in the valley between the pistons, along with everywhere else.



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Is this a Cracked Intake, leaking hose somewhere, blown headgasket?

I poor some filtered water into the over-flow this morning to top it off, stayed cool, no coolant light, but after 20 mins of driving, I popped the hood and fresh coolant in that valley.

Car is a '96 4.6 GT, with ~120k miles.

What is a PI intake swap going to set me back? I see they are $200 from Ford, but I recall reading the swap runs for ~$1,500. I know you need new gaskets, hoses and altinator bracket, but that stuff ads up to $1,300?
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96GT226410

Those manifolds always leak. Without seeing the car it's going to be hard to be 100% sure of where the leak is, but I'm pretty sure that it's the manifold. A PI intake manifold can be had for about $100. I didn't need an alternator bracket because I used Ford's updated aluminum NPI intake manifold crossover. You can use adapter plates with the manifold, but they're expensive. You need gaskets and some RTV.

Zanador

1300 would be a full PI swap with all new parts, that includes Heads,Cams, and Intake. You can get a used PI intake for the 100 area, adaptor plates for (I believe) about 50, and then you need the coolant crossover hose and water pump nipple, as well as PI Intake gaskets.

Corbic

Ok, I follow. So you won't see the 260hp level of the PI engine with out going with the cams, and head, hence why I see that $1,500 number get tossed around when talking about PI swaps.

Zanador

You will actually see more on a PI swapped engine over a PI engine, due to the bump in compression to 10.5:1

Also, 1500 is a rough estimate. If you can find a good deal on used PIheads/Cams/Intake, you can do it for quite a bit cheaper all told. Some people have done it for 1k easy, if you do the labor yourself.

fiad06

ouch that sucks...good excuse for upgrading....do a pi swap and you will be faster than most 99 + gts

hi zanador

Corbic

Now can I go with just the intake to get this thing moving again and latter do the heads + cams, or does this all need to be done at once?

Zanador

The problem is the intake ports on NPI heads do not match PI manifold ports- they make adaptors to make it work, or you can use silicon to seal the misses, but it is a risk. It has been done, but it is not 100% perfect.

Corbic

Now I saw there is a revised "NPI" intake. Does this have the metal front portion? If I'm not doing the full head swap, is there any reason to go with a PI intake?

BlackMage

the pi intake has been proven a lot to give you like 10 hp if not more. but the npi with the updated aluminum crossover will do you fine