After taking out the elbow that goes to the throttle body, I saw that the o-ring was very.. "crunchy", so I decided to replace it. It seems that the previous owner decided to use silicone there and absolutely make it a pain in the A$$ to clean it up for a good mating with a new o-ring. Is using silicone regular practice for achieving higher boost or something? Or should I not worry and just install the new one without silicone. I attached 3 photos: One of the remains of the o-ring, one before, and after I cleaned the throttle body.

Before

After

How to o-ring looked

 

Mazda used a little silicon to hold the O Ring in. try it without and you'll see why

 

The difficulty of it staying in the right place I believe. I've seen people recommend grease. Is that a good alternative?

 

you only need 3 small dabs, one for each side, to hold it in while you install the elbow. that much rtv is annoying to look at. grease would work as well. you just need something to hold it in place. the nonsense alternative is to remove the uim and stand it up so gravity holds it in place and you install the elbow and put it all back in as a unit.

 

I agree. It's a pain to remove from those grooves... i used a small screwdriver and brake cleaner.. I thought of trying with a tooth brush

 

wire brush is a good tool to use for scrubbing that silicon off. Works on oil pan mating surfaces too. Don't scrub too hard. Just enough to get the silicon off. I usually dab a little bit of grease on the 3 "corners" to hold it in place as the others mentioned but silicone works too.

 

I used a thin layer of Permatex High Tack Gasket Sealant, most auto parts stores will have it. It's sticky and makes a huge mess if you're not careful, but won't harden like RTV so you can remove or reposition the gasket later. It's also oil and fuel resistant, which is important because I tend to find blowby oil in the intake pipes. Also easier to clean than dried RTV.

 

I think I used the same thing. I keep it around to install cork gaskets on an antique car and it worked great. Just took a few very small dabs of it.

 

The previous owner went to town with silicone on it..

 

Yeah, I saw that. But that gasket sealant isn’t the same. See above

 

oh, the factory just used 6 dabs sort of evenly spaced. they used a light color.
as you can see O Ring is clearly on top, as its just there to hold the O ring in.



#white glove
#pebble beach

 

I used some grease to hold it in place, and it worked. Used some special grease that helps orings and doesn't attract water blah blah blah