i have been searching for information on this, and ifggured i'd ask here. i'm in the midst of doing my intake gaskets, and i got a question about the coolant fitting on the rear of the intake, it gets fed by one of my heater hoses. i want to completely eliminate it. i can get a NPT fitting for the intake to block off the port, and just run a piece of heater hose directly to the waterpump from the heater core.

why? its been nothing but problems for me, last summer the pot metal that origionally made up the fitting crumbled to bits and i drilled it out and retaped the hole with a NPT fitting and used that, now the hose that feeds it is leaking and i've never really gotten it to seal right since then. i'm so sick of messing with it. can i completely bypass it?

 

Yes

 

ok, would it also help if i left the blockoff plates for the rear intake fittings out, since on my intake the blocked off port is exactly where this hose feeds into it?

and what was its purpose?

and are there any negative effects of doin this?

 

just so anyone knows, for future use i just finished blocking it off, and have zero ill effects. however i left out the blockoff plates to allow coolant to flow into the passages.

 

I was up at the shed where my auto junk is stored so I checked my intake so I could get back to you on this. But it looks like you figured it out already. I would agree that the block offs should stay out, but I'm wondering if air can get trapped back there if there's no flow to the heater. If I were you I'd pull the plug while you're filling it cold to make sure there's nothing but coolant.

 

i don't see how any air can get traped in there since it apears as the rear coolant passage on the intake simply connects the rear ports on the heads together. i coulden't be happier having that thing gone.

 

I'm suggesting as a possibility that when you fill the coolant this passage is higher than the heads so it would be the last area to fill. And with no place for the air to escape it would form a pocket. When you run the engine, the waterpump pumps water into each bank of cylinders from the front and then into the heads. There should be no flow from head to head as each side of the waterpump would be competing to fill that space. But I'm just speculating.

 

point taken. i doubt anything ill will come of it though. and even if something bad does hapen, its not like i've invested too much into a 170,000 mile LG4. i'm just glad that i do not have to deal with that elbow or whatever it was leaking, then spraying into my distributer and causeing a misfire.