Ok, here's the deal: Last week while I was installing my onboard air set up, I noticed that I had a leaking valve cover gasket. So, I took off the intake and vacum lines and all the other junk and eventually installed a new valve cover gasket. While installing the intake manifold, I manged to rip the gasket. Since I didn't want to drive the half hour to get another one, I just carefully placed the gasket back on and installed the manifold. I installed all the vacum lines correctly and started up the truck. It worked fine. Worked on my air set up and continued to start the truck a few times to test out the system. Probably started it 3 or 4 times, but it never ran for more than 2 or 3 minutes.

Last night, I decided to add another line to my air system, the second time I went to start my truck to test it out, it was really hard to start, cranked over for a while, and then sputtered to life. I quickly turned it off, and checked my vacum lines because I thought I might have accidently pulled one off while working on my air system... but everything was fine. I fired her up again, and it kinda coughed and sputtered for a bit, but eventually started to run normally, but when it did, it developed a horribly loud, sparatic knock. I listened in shock for about 20 seconds and then it went away.

This engine only has about 6K miles on it. I'm thinking that the ripped intaked gasket might be letting some air slip by and causing havoc inside my engine :confused: Anyone else have any ideas? Thanks

Did you possibly ingest something? Accidently leave something in the intake runners. Pull the plugs if any of them are damaged something went through the engine.

good idea, thanks for the tip. I screwed up on that first post, I didn't replace the intake gasket, just the plentium (sp?) gasket. Anyway I tore it apart last night and replaced the gasket. I looked like crap were the tear was, all blown out. I haven't fired it back up yet, but I'll pull the plugs and have a look around before I do :emb: