How much torque on intake manifold bolts ???

...hello, I just removed my upper and lower intake and have the O-ring gaskets ready. I was wondering if anyone knows how much i need to torque the intake and upper intake bolts to reinstall. Any help is appreciated, thanks. John


My Explorer 1998 4.0 SOHC was vibrating, like a rough idle mainly in drive with the car at a stop. I changed the motor mounts and tranny mount. It looks like hopefully this will help.

I dunno exactly but NOT much.. the surface those screws are biting on are aluminum and are very easy to strip. I would use a 1/4" socket driver to minimize the torque applied.

I don't have a 98 manual but 2000 says:

13 lb-ft on the lower manifold bolts
62 lb-in (about 5 lb-ft) on the uppers

rwenzing said:

I don't have a 98 manual but 2000 says:

13 lb-ft on the lower manifold bolts
62 lb-in (about 5 lb-ft) on the uppers

Click to expand...

ok, i'll try that. Thanks. One thing that kinda got me wondering here is when I got the intakes off, i was vacuuming the engine up as it was very dirty, I found a small brass plug with the same star type design, about 1/4 long. Don't know when or how that fell in there. Maybe Ford really did change the cam tensioner and dropped it, i dunno, guess i'll look around again tomorrow.

....OUCH !!! I tried 5 lbs. on the uppers and snapped the first bolt !? Dam I hate when that happens. I'm gonna go back to Ford tomorrow and get another one. Actually I called Ford and they said they had a few, only to go down there and they said they ain't got any and you can only order them by the set at 7 bucks a pop. So another Ford a little bit further out has some........ahh well. I could try a hardware store like my buddy says but I have a feeling that will be a wild goose chase.

1/4" drive socket -- you just barely need to torque on it.

Oh crap.....I put them on pretty tight. They didn't snap though.....Is that a good thing? I'm talking about the upper intake nuts, not the Studs.

..I did use a 1/4 " socket !!!!! ...........only it was an adapter on my 3/8 torque wrench So I reset it to 1 lb and it still felt like it was beginning to overload, so yeah, that's when I went with the itty bitty 1/4 ratchet. I left the front middle one out until I get a new one tomorrow. Hopefully I didn't over torque the lowers, everything seems fine.

vapester said:

....OUCH !!! I tried 5 lbs. on the uppers and snapped the first bolt !?

Click to expand...

Torque wrenches are very nonlinear and therefore inaccurate at the low end of the range. The factory spec is given in lb-in so you can use an lb-in torque wrench in the middle part of its range.