I searched for weeks to answer this question. Do I need to drain coolant at least partly to remove intake manifold and not make a mess?

 

Yes you should definitely drain it.

 

Definitely, there is a large coolant port towards the rear.

Have a new oem intake gasket on hand.

 

Do I need to drain all of it or just enough for the high hose from the radiator to not receive coolant from radiator? Or maybe half because the top part of the intake manifold is lower than the attachment of that hose to the radiator? The coolant has been changed less than two years ago so I don’t have a need to do a coolant flush, trying to save as much as possible of it.

Can I reuse the coolant I take out?

 

I am doing the Hondata intake manifold gasket. So, I have one of laying around. Also removing it to have easier access to change the retainers on the valves.

 

If you drain it in a clean container I see no reason not to reuse the fluid, I've done that myself one time.
Might be easiest to drain it all, there will probably be some pockets of coolant left anyways.
Don't forget to drill out the intake gasket so you can use the front bleed port on the manifold, its a major pain to get all the air out without that port.

 

Would drilling that out allow coolant to go into the intake manifold? If so, doesn’t diminish part of the purpose of the Hondata gasket?

 

If you cap off the coolant port that the hole leads to there wont be any flow and thus minimal heat added.

 

Where are exactly are you referring to? There are way too many ports lol

I know this is not what the thread is about. But is there a good step by step DIY for removing the intake manifold? Every thread here posts to www.2000.org page, that website doesn't exist anymore.

 

Here is the bleed screw 19516-PC1-000
Right next to it (marked E-15-10) is the port that leads coolant to the throttle body and then to IACV.
That is what you should cap off.
Use the waybackmachine to check dead web pages, it looks like they even got the pictures saved for you
https://web.archive.org/web/20180810...ods/insulator/