So it turns out the metal coolant plate under the stock intake isn’t a very good design. it’s a dissimilar metal from The Aluminum Intake and it looks like it’s Stamped Out of sheet metal and coated in zinc. I cleaned mine since it was super corroded and thought I could reuse it but apparently it needs to be replaced. The paper gasket and silicone didn’t seem to do much, even after tightening it up when the engine was warm.
LCE Engineering makes an Aluminum 9 Bolt Block Plate version which I’m probably going to replace it with. The picture below shows the stock one leaking. Since it was stamped and not a solid plate the hardware isn’t easy to get to.
I’m just glad in the rebuild process this is the only problem I’ve had so far.
