My engine light came on, on my 01 F150. My gas milage has dropped about 5mpg@$2.85 a gallon.
Paid a Ford dealer $69.95 to find out my upper intake manifold gasket is leaking. It's an 01 F150 with the 4.2 V6. ave any of you fellers changed one? Ford wants $300 to do the job. It dosen't look $300 worth to a poor boy. Parts are about $140, that's alot of beer money difference...
Bob

 

Not me, sorry Bob. You got a manual for it? Take a look and see how ugly it appears to be. (and multiply that by two...) then decide if you'd rather endure the um... pleasure of fixin' her yourself, or just pay the money.

I'm debating similiar on my little Escort...

 

May just pay.......
For $300 they'll (Ford Dealer) WILL FIX THE TRUCK. Or I can try to do it myself and save about $160. I don't have any tipe of a shop manual, nothing to go by. It's causting me about 5 miles a gallon, at near $3 a gallon, so it wouldn't take too many tanks to recover the cost.
Dosen't look real awful bad to do. Ford's labor is 2.2 hours. So that should take a redneck, in the garage, dinking a few beers a couple days.
See what happens..............
Bob

 

I'd pay them!! I have a 1997 Taurus with the 3.0L Duratec engine and have been told I should replace the timing chains at 100K. Ford wants $1400. My local buddy wants $1000. I'm paying. It's a 14 hr job according to the book which translated into several busted knuckles, lots of blood, many bottles of aspirin, a full 7 day week and a tow to my buddies shop to fix what I screwed up trying to fix in the first place.

Yeah, I've learned.

 

Thanks Fellers. I may just let the dealer do the truck. See what the next couple of paychecks look like.

Bob

 

I agree with everyone in I would probably have a shop do it. Although the fact that new engines require a $1400 "tune up" at 100k is ridiculous to me.

 

I probably would pay someone to do the timing chains on a Duratec since it is a DOHC sitting sideways in a FWD car....sounds like a real PITA. A friend of mine does his timing chains in his Eclipse SOHC every 30K on his own but it would be my luck to bump one of the cams out of timing and his is not a non interference motor so you could kiss the valves goodbye. An intake gasket on a 4.2L OHV doesn't sound like a big deal to me since the F-150 has a large engine bay but it may be worse than I think.