Shawnvw,

Thanks for your reply - good to hear from you again.

I'm pretty surethe thing about not filling the pitting on the head with the silicone came from the dtips.com site. That was an excellent tutorial written (and pictured) by an ASE Master Mechanic namedA.Riggs. I just tried to go there to verify, but you need an account to access it now. I also NEVER read anywhere anyone suggesting putting silicone on both sides of the gaskets. That sounds like a good idea to me - but again, what do I know? Nope - everything I ever read anywhere always said to just snap the new gaskets in dry. I think the guy at the dtips site also mentioned that when you ran the silicone bead in the valley it also needed to go underneath the gasket at the bottom (which I did). That made sense to me because it served to kind of bond the dry gaskets to the bead on either end.

As far as the bolts, I cleaned them up pretty good with a brush and brake cleaner.Of all the possible sources of failure Imentioned, I think this one is pretty low probability.

No I did not change the throttle body gasket. And it did NOT come with my Fel-Pro gasket kit.The kit came with the upper and lower intake gaskets, anO-Ring for one of the coolant pipes (I think it was the one near the throttle body, butit might've been the oneon the front of the engine), and MAYBE one other O-Ringor gasket (but not the EGR gasket). Can't remember right now what it was. Thethrottle bodycame off with the upper intake, so I just left it on there. I just ended up spraying and cleaning the inside.

But I'm glad you mentioned this - I'll check to see if this is what is actually leaking. Hadn't thought of it as a possibility. I'm pretty sure, though, that there's wetness all around the base of the V-seal. A throttle body leakprobably wouldn't produce this "footprint".