gas is scarce out here in Staten Island (I'm sure you've seen the news) so a repair I want to get done will have to done by me since I;m at 1/4 tank and am waiting till this whole cluster-F blows over.

Hoping you all can help. This may be long but i'm hoping the more experienced freakers here can help with this....here goes:

so I've had a strong gas smell coming from the engine bay for a while and have put a few threads on it in the past. Basically started after getting a valve adjustment and screw in the valve cover/head rethreaded after a cousin over torqued it in the past. I brought it back to honda and they thought it was an o-ring for an injector since no codes were being thrown. They advised me to keep he car on recirculate and to keep an eye on the bay for leaks if any.

20,000 miles later the smell hasnt gotten worse or better (obviously) but my fuel economy went down a tick and it is just annoying to have this lingering when I take care of the car so well. Took it to an independent mechanic since I was going to have him do the Serpitine belt and he also believes it might be an o ring and believes honda should have taken the extra 10 minutes to have replaced them back when I went there for the valve adjustment and screw taping.

Now here I am thinking that since I cant drive anywhere I might as well give this repair a shot myself since the belt doesnt look too hard to remove per the Service Manual. My questions is:

can I avoid removing the cowl assembly/ upper intake manifold to replace the o rings on the upper manifold and fuel injectors?

I was think of removing the intake manifold, replace the upper and lower gaskets then removing the injectors and replacing the o rings (all parts ordered). I've removed it all in the past and it takes a while to do it with a whole lot of parts and screws all over the place. Since the fuel rail is tucked behind the manifold, I thought i could take this shortcut and leave everything else in place until 100k when I will replace the plugs.

Thoughts?