how to remove an intake manifold?

Hi Guys,

Having some problems with idle (https://www.3geez.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23781)and messing around with everything I was finally able to determine that the intake manifold gasked is leaky. Great - I thaught... But it's not as easy as il looked. It was pretty difficult to get to 4 nuts on the bottom of the intake and one of them seems almost impossible to get to. This is the last one left. If you look at the engine from the front this would be a second one from the left (pass. side). Is there some special techinque to do it? Do I remove two intake supporting elements, do I need to clean the stuff bellow the intake like the alternator, oil filter and so on?
I hope I don't have to unbolt the head to take it off together with the intake... Thanks for your advices or may be somebody knows about some thread explaining this. Greg.

it took me all day to remove my intake manifold. i had to remove almost all of the vacuum lines and other crap.

I finally did it. I got rid of most of the vacuum junk several days ago but still it wasn't easy... I had a couple of hard and flexible extensions for my ratchets. Fortunatelly bolts weren't that tight. I had to operate through different intake openings. I can't imagin bolting this to a specified torque. I just put a lot of sealant and screwed it back...

I think the official method (shop manual) for removing the intake manifold is to pull the head with the manifold bolted to it. I did that changing a head gasket. That means: valve cover, all the vacuum hoses, exhaust manifold, and I took another shortcut, I didn't remove the timing belt. I removed the timing belt cover, loosened the tensioner, and slipped the head off (and then back on) leaving the belt in place.

Glad to hear you got the manifold taken care of. Those bolts underneath are in just the worst darn place I could imagine. It seems anything right under the intake is a hellacious place to work!

You just have to lay under the car and go to town. The hardest part for me was gettting the stupid egr valve off so I could get at the one bolt pinched in there.