Anyone have any input on this job? Or a list of steps. My wife's car is idling rough and I've isolated it to a leak in the middle of 2/3 at the head. I sprayed carb cleaner there and the idle drops pretty good. I've done a bit of searching and can see that its a bit of a pain in the butt to do. Lots of experience with other cars, but I haven't had to fix anything this one yet.

 

Get a Haynes manual. They are good for that kind of a job.

 

Well I guess I find myself on a fairly limited budget this weekend, so I was looking for actual input on the job. Even so much as I can't go buy a Haynes, which in my experience are terrible, terrible, useless manuals anyway. I wish there were a Bentleys for Mazdas.

 

I've completed the job, so I'm going to answer my own question in case it helps someone else. My symptoms were poor idle and check engine light, then flashing check engine light. I replaced the intake boot, cleaned out the EGR, and replaced the throttle body mounting gasket. All of these things were shot and each one improved drivability somewhat, but the problems were still there for the most part. I could still audibly hear a vacuum leak, but everything else seemed fine. In the end I sprayed around with some carb cleaner, and when I sprayed it down on the IM between 2&3 the idle dropped and you could actually see it draw the vapour in.
I replaced the gasket without removing the intake.
1. remove IM support bracket from underneath the car (4 14mm nuts)
2. Remove coolant lines from Throttle Body - I didn't drain the coolant because in my experience you can just pop these off and pull them up and out of the way and lose no coolant.
3. Remove Injector electrical connectors and any vac lines or ancillary stuff that might be in the way.
4. Remove the 7 (12mm) bolts/stud nuts that attach the IM to the head. It seems at first impossible to get at the two outer lower bolts, but if you look there are channels cast into the IM that you can easily get a socket and extension bar through. I found that my 1/4inch drive worked best, and the torque is not excessive, so no worries about breaking it.
5. Pry the IM back. (Don't use anything metal or you may damage the surfaces. I'm Canadian so I used a 2 foot portion of a hockey stick!)
6. Plug the 4 head openings with cloth.
7. Scrape off the old gasket (worst part of job)
8. Install gasket with the plain side to the engine.
9. Reverse out your steps.

In doing it this way I didn't have to drain the coolant, remove the throttle body, relieve fuel pressure or any extra steps. Its debatable if it actually saves any time over removing the entire IM as cleaning the mating surfaces really sucks. Time 3 hours start to finish. Car idles perfectly now without hesitation or misfire.

 

So, time to dig up an old thread.

I had the initial problem of a P0171 and yes I have a new non ripped intake tube. I put a new downstream O2 and new downpipe in and cleared the codes. After that I then got the mind boggling problem of not being able to complete 3 different drive cycles (after a month of driving and 2000 miles). I attempted to fix it with a new egr because of idling issues and previously taking it off and cleaning it helped. This time it did not. I then noticed I had a mysterious loud vacuum leak sound coming from under the fuel rail somewhere. After doing some reading I replaced the vacuum check valve under there seeing as someone else had that issue and it fixed it. Of course, this did not fix it either. So now $170 down the drain on an egr and check valve and my idle actually got much worse and I still cannot complete the drive cycles. Finally yesterday 2 out of 3 cycles completed and I got a P0171 again. I checked all the vacuum lines and they were perfect, but there was still definitely a huge vacuum leak. After reading this post I sprayed some brakleen around the intake gasket and sure enough that was the problem. New intake gasket is on today and she idles great! Now to drive it around for a while and let the CEL fix itself. I don't feel like clearing it and waiting for those drive cycles to complete again.

I'd like to add to jbird's writeup that in order for me to clean the old gasket material I needed to fully remove the manifold. In order to do that I had to disconnect the EGR tube which of course was impossible to do on the intake end. I had to disconnect it on the exhaust side and then I needed to remove that entire coolant junction block. This was by far the most pain in the *** par of the job. Removing the old gasket material was made much easier with a heat gun. I also bypass the TB coolant lines. The hell with that! Thanks jbird!

 

I had to use a an engine support bar to hold up the Intake Manifold (00' Protege 1.6L) while I replaced the gasket.