I've had a surging idle problem that I've been wanting to solve and finally got around to smoke testing the intake manifold. There were 4 main leaks that I was able to identify. One was just a crack in a hose that was simple to repair.

The second one is the EGR valve. My car is old enough that it doesn't have to be emissions tested, so I think the best coarse of action here is to just delete the EGR valve and have a shop disable the sensor for my chipped OBD1 ECU. If I were to keep the EGR valve, would replacing the gasket fix this leak? It appears that the smoke is coming from the valve body and not the gasket.





The third leak is around the return spring for the IAB valve. I don't see a seal in the parts diagram that could be replaced. I believe that the IAB's still work, but it's uncontrolled and operates from vacuum alone.






The fourth leak was less severe than the first three and was located around the return spring for the throttle valve. Are there seals on the ends of the throttle plate shaft that are replaceable? I didn't see any seals in the parts diagram.






I'm half tempted to purchase a Skunk2 intake manifold since it would eliminate the EGR valve and IAB assembly, while also cleaning up the engine bay a bit.

 

you could use some epoxy to seal most not sure about the springs but i bet you could take them apart and sort something out

 

I think you're right. If there are in fact seals for the IAB and throttle plate shaft, I could probably find suitable replacements. This isn't my daily driver, so the car can be down for a while until all of the parts are sourced. I was just hoping that I could purchase most of it before tearing into the intake manifold to minimize the downtime.