Somebody I work with has a 2002 explorer with a 4.0 and his check engine light is on due to a leak somewhere in the engine bay. I listened to it at work the other day and it sounded like the intake manifold was leaking and I saw some slight smoke coming up from it. His idle is slightly higher than I think it should be too (just above 1000 rpms). He went to a shop this morning and they ran their fogger and said that the intake manifold is leaking.

My question is, what is the excitement(difficulty) level of changing the gasket out? It looks like it might have an upper intake manifold that possibly leads into a lower, but I'm not quite sure. I'm thinking of offering to do it for him, but I'd like to know the amount of time I should set aside for it. I just got my f250 back together after some turbo and pushrod work, and am about to move, so my time is sort of limited. If it's something I could do in a few hours I'm not concerned. I'm just curious if there is some secret squirrel crap that's going to be time consuming or difficult. I'd like to think I'm handy, so the job doesn't scare me, I just need to know what kind of time am I looking at start to finish for this.

 

There is no lower manifold on the 4.0 SOHC engine. The upper plenum runners seal directly to the ports of the heads with large o-ring type gaskets. It is a fairly easy job to do. Probably can be done in less than 2 hrs. I did both valve cover gaskets, fuel pressure sensor, and intake gaskets in about 5-6 hrs on my 2005. Cleaning up the parts/head surfaces took about 1/3 of the time.