How to Replace Lower Intake Gasket 2008-12 Ford Escape

What's up, guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the lower intact gasket on this 2012 Ford Escape. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1A Auto.com.

I'm going to start by disconnecting the battery. I have an 8mm socket and a ratchet. Loosen up this nut and take the terminal off. Just wiggle it off, back and forth, and set it aside. All right. So, I want to disconnect this mass air flow sensor first. Just take a screwdriver, pull that lock out, and push down on the tab. Pull that off, and disconnect the electrical retainer right here. Just use a trim tool. Going to take a straight blade screwdriver--loosen up this worm clamp right here. That's good.

The trim tool--pop these out and get underneath. I guess they got to be a little higher, so I'll pull those out. Then, instead of taking the air backs apart, I'm just going to grab this intake tube, which, there's another tube that's connected down here. Disconnect this. There's a little lock on here. Just need to push it down, like that, slide that off, and we can just grab this, and slide the air box out of the way.

Okay. I'm going to disconnect the throttle body connector. Just take a screwdriver, release that lock, push down on the connector, and slide it out. There's another connector right here--disconnect that, push down on that, and slide that out. And right here, disconnect this connector to the EGR valve and slide that out. Take the trim tool, release the retainer that holds the wire on, pull that off, and slide those out of your way.

I want to take this hose off right here. I'm going to use a curved pick and a pocket screwdriver. The curved pick, I'm going to get underneath this little lock tab right here. Just apply a little bit of pressure, not too much, and then on the back side of the pocket screwdriver, just release the tabs, and it'll slide right out, and we can slide the hose right off.

Take some pliers and release this hose clamp right here. Wiggle this off. If the hose doesn't come off, you can take a right angle pick and get underneath there and release it. And do the same with this one. Sometimes this isn't too easy. You can take some needle nose pliers and some right angle needle nose pliers. What I'm trying to do is get that little pin in the hole of the hose clamp so that it stays together. Just like that. Slide it off.

Going to disconnect the MAP sensor right here. Push down on the lock and slide it off. I'm going to take these EGR bolts out. There's two 10mm bolts. So I'll use a 10mm socket and ratchet. Then you pull the bolt up and that's going to be separated from the intake.

There's a bracket underneath this intake, so I'm going to use an 8mm socket and ratchet to take these. There's three bolts that hold this on. Going to pull that bracket out. You could just leave that bracket loose there, but I don't want to forget it so I'm going to pull it out.

Now, I'm going to take these bolts out. There's seven of these bolts. I'm going to use an 8mm socket extension and a ratchet. Okay. This long bolt comes out. These other ones are caged. They stay in there with the intake, just make sure they're loose. Just get these wires out of the way. Grab the intake. You want to make sure if there's any debris on top, you don't tip the intake because you don't want any of that going into the intake ports.

We don't want anything going into these intake ports, so we're just going to take some rags. Make sure you put them in there. I don't put them in all the way--I leave them hanging out so that I don't put the intake on by accident with them in there. I know that there a rag in there.

Before I pull this intake off, and before I disconnect the fuel line, I noticed there was a mouse that got in here, or some kind of rodent, and there's a lot of debris and stuff. So, what I want to do is vacuum it out. You want to make sure when you're using a vacuum, especially an electric vacuum, don't suck up any fuel because then your vacuum is going to blow up. So, I'm going to do that, suck this all out.

I want to take this trim tool--just want to slide this wire retainer off there and disconnect this connector right here. Push down, pull that off, that just goes to the injector wiring harness. Now that I got that cleaned out, I'm going to take an 8mm socket extension and a ratchet and there's eight bolts all around the lower intake. I'm going to take those out. I'm going to leave the fuel rails connected for now. All right. With all those bolts loose, I'm just going to take a magnet and pull them out. I don't want them to fall out while I'm pulling the intake off. So, make sure you don't drop them. Oops. Dropped it. Got the last one.

At this point, I can grab the lower intake and give it a little force. Lift it up and pull it up. Be careful with this hose, you don't want to break that, so I'm just going to slide this out of the way a little bit. Just like that. And then make sure nothing goes in. We still have a lot of mouse nest stuff that I'm going to have to vacuum up, and it's good that I disconnect the fuel yet because I don't want any fuel in there when I'm vacuuming it up.

All right. Now that we have that off and cleaned up, I can take some rags and just stuff them back in there, just so if I drop anything that it doesn't fall into the intake ports.

All right. I want to take these old seals out, just take a pick, grab the seal, try not to scratch the aluminum, and peel those out. And I'll do the same with the other ones.

Okay, before we install this, I'm just going to take some brake parts cleaner, and a rag and just try to clean this up a little bit. Then, I'm going to take the gaskets, install the new gaskets. Just line them up and press them in. All right, that's all set. I'm just going to set that aside for now. And I'm going to take these rags out, make sure I pull all those out, then I'll just take a little brake parts cleaner on a rag and just clean these areas up. Make sure you don't get any sand in there or anything.

Those are all cleaned up. No rags in there. Take this intake, flip it into position. If you disconnected the fuel line, you can reconnect that, but I left mine connected the whole time. I'm just going to try to line up those bolt holes. I'm going to start the bolts right here, it's going to be easiest to start this one on the end. Take the 8mm socket and extension, just get it started, I'm not going to go all the way down. And then I'm going to take the bolt, stick it in the socket, and try to hold it. It is a little bit tricky to get these in, get those started. These ones are a little more tricky. If you can get your finger in there.

It would also be ideal if you had a socket that had a magnet in it, because then you could hold that. I'm going to take the socket and then the extension, you can take the bolt, and I can take some tape. You can use electrical tape or masking tape. And I'm just going to tape around the bolt, like this. Just like that. That way it stays in the socket and you can install it. When you go to install it, you get it started. Pull the socket up, and it goes right out, and the bolt is in the spot you need it.

Another way to use tape is to put tape over the socket, and then you're just going to force the bolt in there, like this. And the tape is going to hold the bolt in there, and you can go over and install the bolt. Get that started. Once it's started, then you can pull it off. And there's the tape--pull it right off. Another trick is to take some grease on the bolt. Put that on the socket and just wipe the grease off. The grease is going to hold the bolt in. Slide the bolt in there, just like that. And then it pulls right out. That little bit of grease on the bolt isn't going to make any difference. It can stay there.

Now, all those bolts are in and it's just snugged up. Now, I'm going to take a torque wrench with the 8mm socket and I'm going to torque it in a certain sequence to AV9 inch-pounds. So, I have number one right here, number two is right here, number three is over here, number four is right there, number five, number six, number seven, and number eight. Basically, from the center, and then outwards.

Before I put the upper intake on, it's going to be easier to scrap these EGR valve gasket. So, just take the scraper and scrape any of this access gasket off. We're going to replace this gasket. If you don't have a gasket and the gasket you had doesn't look too bad, you can try to reuse it. It's recommended that you replace it when you take this apart. Make sure you don't get any stuff inside the EGR valve. Just try to blow it out after.

Now, you want to make sure you remove these rags from the intake ports. Don't want to leave those in. Then, take a rag and some brake parts cleaning, clean up the surface right here. Just make sure there's nothing raised up.

At this point, you're going to want to replace this gasket on the intake. We have already done that, so this is a new gasket, so we don't have to do that. Just take a pick, peel it out, just like the lower intake gasket and put the new one on. I'm just going to slide this in position. Try to get the hoses out of your way. Take the wiring harness, fish that in position, and that looks like it's lined up pretty good. Going to get all these bolts started. Make sure you get that long bolt--get that one in. You can just snug these all down by hand.

Now, we're going to use the 8mm socket and the torque wrench, and we're going to torque these to 89 inch-pounds in a sequence. So, we're going to start with number one, number two is right here, number three is over here, number four is over here, number five is right here, number six, and number seven. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Okay, now we have to torque these to a specific angle. We have to torque these bolts to 45 degrees, which, you can take a felt tip pen, it'll mark these bolts. The angle that I need is 45 degrees, which 45 degrees is going to be half of 90. So, if I have 90 degrees as right here, I want these bolts to be in between those two lines. So, right about there. I want to torque those all to that.

Another thing you can do is you can actually take your socket, and you can draw a line on your socket. So, if you wanted to go to 45 degrees, you do it to that line. If you had to go to 90 degrees, you're going to do a right angle. Depending on what the angle is that you need, this could be easy, or it could be kind of difficult trying to find the actual angle that you need, but 45 degrees is pretty easy. So, that's a quick way to do this.

The washer seems to be moving with it, so that's not really good in our instance, but I can also look at my torque wrench. So, right now, if I torqued this and went all the way to my forearm, it's going to be 90 degrees, so I want to go half way in between. That would be 45 degrees. Right there.

Because I marked all these, now I know that I actually torqued all of those to the right angle. The washers didn't move, so that didn't help me out, but I could have marked it somewhere on the case right there, or right there, and that would work. That's an easy way to get angle torque if you don't have an angle meter.

I'm going to install this bracket underneath here. Going to attach it to the back side head and the lower part of the intake. Now, I'm just going to take an 8mm socket and ratchet and tighten these up. Not too tight, the intake is plastic, so be careful. Now, I'm going to install these EGR bolts, but I'm going to have to slide the gasket behind here and slide the bolts through. This is a little bit tricky. There we go. Get that one started, and then get that one started.

I'll take a 10mm socket and a ratchet--tighten these up. Now we'll just snug those up. Take this hose, and slide this on. This hose clamp was still in that lock position, so we can take a screwdriver, keep your fingers clear, just release it. This one, I'm going to need some pliers to clamp that. You can use hose clamp pliers as well, or regular pliers work. Release that. This hose, install this, slide it down, and then push the lock on. Make sure it's nice and secure.

Now we're going to connect the electrical connectors. Connect the throttle body and then push down on the lock. Oops. Pop that in place, lock this one in place. There's no lock on that one. And then EGR, and this wire retainer right here. Connect the MAP sensor. We didn't connect this earlier, this is the fuel rail connector, right there. Connect that and then connect this wire ready to that bracket.

Then I'll take this intake, and then connect this hose right here first. Move the wires out of the way. Make sure to lock it in place. Slide that over the throttle body. The snorkel. And line the air box up, press it straight down. I'll connect the electrical connector first, and the wire retainer. Take any straight blade screwdriver, screw in the worm clamp. Take these pushpins, install these right here, and lock them down. We can connect the negative terminal on the battery. Get an 8mm socket and a ratchet, and snug this up.

Just make sure the terminal is tight. Nope. It's loose. Tighten it up a little more. That's good.

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