Coolant leak at throttle body ( newby )

[evil step child]

Hi,
I'm a newby here. My finance and I bought a 1993 Cutlass Supreme SL with a 3.4 dohc at a police auction for her daughter, it has 105,000km (65,000miles) on it. The car appears to have been well taken care of it has almost new Michellins and there are recent service stickers under the hood for things like the transmission and timing belt etc, all the fluids were up and clean. Once we cleaned the broken glass out of the back seat and a melted box of chocolates off the back seat the car looked great for $900.00 ( the window had already been replaced ).

The second day we had it coolant started leaking from under the throttle body I have confirmed the source of the leak by taking out one of the bleed screws and applying 15psi to the system it spurts out from either the hose or the fitting where it attaches to the bottom of the throttle body.
I'm finding the Haynes manual not very helpful with this engine there are clearly some steps missing in the manual for removing the plenum.

Can some one give me a run down on getting the plenum off and replacing the offending hose, and any recommendations on other things that should be taken care of while I'm in there. I'll pull the injector and clean them and replace the o-rings while I'm in there.

Doug

[walterdude]

Plenum Removal: http://60degreev6.com/showthread.php?t=24976
Lower Intake Removal: http://60degreev6.com/showthread.php?t=24977

These may help,,, if you are talking about the short hose (2"-3" if I remember correctly) that goes vertically,,, between the throttle body and the lower intake man or block (it's been awhile). The links to the pictures are dead/missing but, you can get the general idea. Replace the plenum gasket while you're in there. You can just use the correct diameter hose cut to the proper length. Since the hose is probably shot just cut it to make disassembly easier.
Hope this helps,,,,
Tom

PS: Personally, I wouldn't leave out the screws that the author left out for the tranny vacuum line and fuel line clamp.
Otherwise it's pretty straight forward.
Not that you're likely to need it, I also included a link for LIM removal.
OH,,, AND WELCOME TO THE SITE!!!!

[evil step child]

Plenum Removal: http://60degreev6.com/showthread.php?t=24976
Lower Intake Removal: http://60degreev6.com/showthread.php?t=24977

These may help,,, if you are talking about the short hose (2"-3" if I remember correctly) that goes vertically,,, between the throttle body and the lower intake man or block (it's been awhile). The links to the pictures are dead/missing but, you can get the general idea. Replace the plenum gasket while you're in there. You can just use the correct diameter hose cut to the proper length. Since the hose is probably shot just cut it to make disassembly easier.
Hope this helps,,,,
Tom

PS: Personally, I wouldn't leave out the screws that the author left out for the tranny vacuum line and fuel line clamp.
Otherwise it's pretty straight forward.
Not that you're likely to need it, I also included a link for LIM removal.
OH,,, AND WELCOME TO THE SITE!!!!

Thanks for the links Tom they helped a lot. Bad news is I found what looks like a piece of a valve seat floating around in the intake manifold.
Could be fatal.

Doug

[MONICAZ34]

I had that hose blow out on me last month, made a horrible mess of things. and overheated the engine... change that thing RIGHT away.

[kuwaitliberation]

Thanks for the links Tom they helped a lot. Bad news is I found what looks like a piece of a valve seat floating around in the intake manifold.
Could be fatal.

Doug

Was the engine running poorly? I would think that it would be very difficult to get the valve seat, or even a piece of it, up into the intake manifold. There is some controversy about these engines, but from what I understand, this is a non-interference engine and the valves cannot strike the pistons.

Go ahead and do a compression test now. That will tell you right away if there is an issue.

As far as the coolant leak goes, just go ahead and replace the hoses and seals. It's not as bad as it might seem.

Good luck.