I've had an intake manifold gasket leak for about a year that results in a very loud and annoying "tea kettle" whistle that lasts until the engine warms up. It also has this great tendency to kick it up when I'm in a drive-thru ordering food. Awesome..
With getting married, and buying an remodeling a new house its one of those things that kept getting out on the back burner.

Then, I got a crack in my exhaust manifold a couple of weeks ago, and it kept getting louder.

So I bit the bullet, bought a new manifold, a good Felpro gasket, and some copper gasket spray, and got to work this past Saturday.

Only five and a half hours, with a 30 minute break at the halfway mark to eat lunch. I was thanking myself that when my brother and I put the new longblock in three years ago, I slathered every fastener I could with copper anti-seize compound. All the fasteners came apart without a fight. Those two exhaust flange bolts that usually have to be cut or torched off? they spun right off with minimal effort just using a regular ratchet. While I spent $10 on that bottle of COPPER anti-seize, it's been worth it's weight in GOLD.

 

Nice job on that ! I hope I don't ever have to do it ! Your engine bay is really clean