[sillyrabbit0420]

Hi! I'd like to share my tale of woe for today. I'm installing a S/C from Vortech, and things were going swimmingly until I went to replace the stock fuel injectors with the new ones. I pulled the injectors, and noticed small amounts of dirt under some of them. Since I'm picky about such things, I decided to clean injector ports, and I pulled the spark plug boots to make this process easier. Much to my surprise and dismay...I found that the middle two spark plugs on the driver's side of my motor were full of coolant! WTF!!! I can't believe my car was running normally with two plugs bathing in anti-freeze, but it was. Obviously, this is a significant roadblock to my supercharger install, but on the bright side...I'm glad as hell I went batsh*t about cleaning some dirt, and found the problem with the plugs now, instead of later when the car's entirely back together.

I pulled the manifold, and cleaned the hell out of it with Simple Green, but was unable to find any cracks or abnormalities with it. It looks fine to me. The gasket on the driver side looks suspect, it's definitely cracked and deteriorated in one place (where the thermostat would bolt in above it ) and there is discoloration of the cylinder head in that area from the coolant leaking around the gasket. There is a small amount of corrosion/pitting in this area which I don't think will buff out, and it looks generally f8cked up.
So there's a pic of it below, the pitting/corrosion is visible in the upper right and right side around the hole stuffed with paper towel.

I'm not supertunermechanic guy, there are many things I don't know, and I don't know what to make of this. It seems like it shouldn't be too big of a deal, but will my gasket ever seal properly, or should I use some RTV around the area too?
What else is trippy is that the coolant was leaking into the two middle plug wells, and not the first one, which is closest to the area in question.
Possibly the manifold has a hairline crack that I can't see, or is warped? I dunno. My feeling is that the manifold is ok, but the gasket is definitely trashed. I'm sure someone has more experience with this than I do. I'm aware of problems that people have had with the plastic manifolds, but I'd rather not replace the manifold with an aftermarked one if it's not cracked. If I choose to go this route what manifold would you recommend? FRRP? Anyone want to sell a manifold?
Any advice is welcome. I want to get this thing back on the road with my S/C and race the V8 KILLA riced out Civic I keep seeing around town.

[WillieGT]

yea something similar happened to me last week my manifold i was driving and i just see smoke come out from under my throttle body area and sure enough my intake cracked leaking coolant all over..but when i took it off it was a tiny crack..but the gasket on the other hand was pretty beat up especially by where the thermostat was at so i suggest getting new gaskets and be careful not to leak any coolant into ur coil cuz u will mess it up..take it from me..but im all good now

[racin366]

I really don't know what to tell you just from looking at the pick, but my opinion is that pitting and cracking is not good, especially considering you're installing a supercharger. I can't tell how deep it runs, or if there is anything else not shown, but that would make me pretty nervous. I would start by gently cleaning it with a razor blade to get as much old gasket and crap off as possible, but be GENTLE, the razor blade is harder than the head and can damage it if you're not careful. Depending how it looks after cleaning with the razor blade you may want to try scrubbing with a WHITE (softest) scotchbrite pad, they can do wonders. If it's cracked there's a problem, if its a small bit of pitting you might be fine, and hopefully its just some of the old crap sticking. The problem with cracks is propagation, they tend to get grow along their lines when stressed, and that area is gonna see stress. Hopefully I'm being way too in depth, but be thorough with it so you don't have any problems later. More pics may help, but something like that is hard to judge from pics.

[sillyrabbit0420]

The head isn't cracked. The area looked a bit better after removing the old gasket material. I used some black RTV and dabbed it over the pitted area, then smoothed it off with a razor blade until it was flush with the rest of the head. New gaskets and intake went back on, and...Vortech sent the wrong pulley with my kit.
They sent me a ribbed idler

Hmmm... there's a small bug on my computer screen that looks like a crawling "." Sorry, stupid ADD...

pulley instead of a smooth one, so I'm on hold again until I can contact them and get the correct one.

Also, I checked with Ford about the supposed recall on intake manifolds, and they claimed no knowledge of it. They did, however, tell me that I can get a "kit" to replace the one I have with the updated manifold for the reasonable price of $810 and change.
I almost laughed. I'm glad I'm not a total monkey and can work on my own car, because Ford's prices are ridiculous. Do Nancy Pelosi and Obama own Ford? Because the government's gotta be involved with numbers like that.