[Saga Lout]

I have some rattling V6 Inlet manifolds lying around and curiosity got the better of me. I opened one up to try to understand the problems a little better, what a can of worms we face in the future. The picture one shows the butterflies in the open position, picture two shows the operating rod in position and that's where all our problems come from, the axles that the butterflies are on are hard plastic in a hard plastic carrier, the pictures three and four show the kind of wear I've described, not all of them seem to wear but the ones nearest the vis motor do wear a lot. The carriers are sonic welded on to the manifold rather like a crown being placed. I'd say it's very possible to remove them and swap bad ones for good ones, they wear out the axle and carriers and go very baggy, it seems that this then puts a strain on the operating shaft and, the areas where it clips on to the butterflies elongates and then simply falls off, this results in the butterfly just flapping around. The last picture shows an elongated hole and the shaft is nothing but scrap, it's made from hard plastic and wears badly. I reckon the only way to get round this problem is a new type of shaft and find a way to bush the axle holes for the butterflies, if we can't solve this then all manifolds will end up scrap at some point, I do think regular oil changes will help but not enough in the long term.