Man after less than a week of driving I'm out everything I put into this car. I was at a stoplight pulled forward and BOOM! Smoke and everything coming out from the hood I pulled over. I thought it was the transmission I just built. (Which was one smooth ****) Nope , I got out popped the hood and the intake was on fire. Now I've tried to smother more than a couple gas fires. I didn't even try. Slammed the hood shut , yanked my dog out of the passenger seat and called the FD.
You know I looked into this theres all this "Fuel pressure regulator" and "valve cover gaskets leaking oil" recalls or claims and whatever. Really man let's go back to the basics. You ever slightly misalign an intake manifold gasket on your small block chevy? Yeah it's weird right? Fires up , usually idles to the moon with a carb setup and then coughs spits through the intake a bunch of flame.
Same with TBI , seen it actually run just fine and then pbbth pbb pbbthh pop.. You know what does this?? Vacuum leaks yeah vacuum leaks and other TBI bull**** but thats not what I mean here.
Of all the things GM came up with , they didn't ever think maybe a 2 piece plastic on aluminum intake manifold with plastic ****ing gaskets would cause a vacuum leak. Even if you got the ZZP steel LIM gaskets you still got a plastic upper gasket. Thanks GM for building me a flimsy intake on flimsy gaskets on an engine that's supposed to be the next generation 3.8 turbo-T. Your dad should have probably beaten you more young GM. It was okay back then and look how long those cars lasted. You know what the service manager at Chevrolet told me when I asked him if he could hook me up with some wiring diagrams for my tow truck. He said "I'm actually not that smart and I have to goto a meeting. Maybe the parts guys can find something for you." I sure hope his meeting was for tutoring and trade school because we can't have business men making decisions on how these things should be fixed. FRUSTRATED MAN!!! She was smoother than ever and not even tuned yet.

 

Did the intake actually blow up while running? (Just saw you said BOOM and didn't know if you meant literally or figuratively).

Other common culprits if it was up on the intake are injector o rings and fuel rail O rings (more often the latter as theyre internal so many people don't think to service them).

 

Damn man, sorry to see this.

 

I am really sorry about what happened with your car. Thankfully you and your dog are safe, no one was hurt.

None of what I have to say will make it truly better, but just want to clarify a few things.
- There was a year or two that GM's supplier of Fuel Pressure Regulators had a high failure rate. It would let fuel vapors leak into the intake, then when the spark plug fired, ignite those vapors and the upper intake explodes. Keep in mind, yes GM's logo might be on everything, but some times it is all re-branded items OR items farmed out to other companies to build for them. I want to say 2001/2002.
- The valve cover fire recall, I fail to understand this. Those same covers and gaskets have been used at least since 1993! I think it is a matter of the gasket ages and the seal is no longer holding right (or improper install and the gasket slips out of position).

As for the gaskets, ZZP did not make the metal core lower gaskets, they are just re-selling another company's gasket (like FelPro). I admit, the plastic lower gasket is a big fail and should have been designed differently years ago! As for the upper intake gasket, no one has made a revised one because the typical failure the seals between the EGR stove pipe and the coolant passages to and from the throttle body (that pass through the plastic upper intake). I have seen TWO upper intakes (and I bet there are more if not all) where the casting on them is bad and that coolant passage is about 50% blocked. Best answer, if you ever do lower intake gaskets, block off the coolant ports to the throttle body (and if worried about coolant flow, enlarge the coolant bypass on the lower intake). I have a Monte with over 200k miles and the factory original upper intake. I just did lower intake gaskets this spring and it should for a long time now (and yes, I blocked those ports even though there was no failure yet). Pics of that job are buried in this thread: https://montecarloforum.com/forum/sh...k-monte-62826/