Re: Best way to remove gasket material from riser/manifold joint 99 Volvo 5.0 GL
I just cleaned up mine yesterday.
I did remove both the manifolds and risers. It makes the cleanup easier since after all, you want to extract all of the debris from the exhaust passage.
Here's what I did:
-) On the risers:
- Scrape off AS MUCH of the original gasket as you can with a hard non-marring surface. I borrowed / destroyed some of my son's LEGO blocks since they are hard enough to get the gasket off, but they won't scratch the aluminum surface
- use a sanding block (buy a decent one, like 3M ($3) since it is hard rubber that gives a little bit, not wood that will be flat, but eat through your sanding paper. Sand the surface until it feels very smooth to the touch. Volvo recommends a maximum surface variation of 0.1mm, which in most cases you can feel. I had some spots left that were not looking silver like the metal, but were black. Most of them were in a pattern that looked like the original head. I could not feel a surface difference on them.
-) On the manifolds:
- Do the same thing as described above for the riser mating surface
- For the engine side of the manifolds, I did this (they are not as sensitive to flatness as the risers, but you don't want exhaust gasses in your engine compartment either):
Scrape off the gasket from the manifold (most of it was sticking to the engine side in my case anyway). I used a chisel and a rubber hammer with care so I wouldn't mark it too much.
I used a sharp knife to "peel off" the gasket from the engine side as much as I could.
After that, I used the same chisel + rubber hammer with great care to get most of the gasket off.
I finally sanded the surfaces with the 3M sanding block making sure that I got most of the gasket off (use your finger to feel how smooth it is)
BTW: I found that the gasket stickiness and general rust on screws/manifold was a lot more on the starboard side than on the port side.
VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you use a vacuum in all of your exhaust passages to make sure you get all of the dirt out that you just sanded off!!!
Also, if you do this, don't even think of putting the manifolds and risers together offsite and putting the combo on inside the boat. You'll be teaching yourself a whole new set of cusswords. Put them on one by one. Just make sure you're careful puttng the risers on the manifolds with the new OEM gaskets, and you'll be fine.....
A few more notes:
-) After cleaning my risers, I washed them out with brake cleaner and let them dry
-) Make sure you clean the bolt threads on your manifolds to make sure there is no debris in them
-) Make sure you try your srews to go inside the manifolds to make sure the threads are fine (on both sides), if not, clean the inside threads with a cotton swab+paper towel wrapped around it. You want to do this to make sure that the torque specs you read when torquing the bolts are what the bolt is experiencing from torquing down, not from trying to get through the rust.
-) Torque your bolts as Volvo prescribes!!!
