In my never ending battle against smoke and high EGT's, I decided to tackle my leaking exhaust manifolds. I knew the driver's side was leaking pretty good around #8, but I found the passenger's side was leaking a little around #7 after I got it off. My questions:

1) I'm having a machine shop resurface the manifolds. What do I need to do to the mounting surfaces on the heads? I saw one post where a guy hd cleaned his up, but he didn't say how he did it.

2) What kind of high temp anti seize or grease works best?

3) How on earth do you get the fender liners reinstalled in one piece? Did any of you unbolt the shock mount? I don't see how they'll go back in without that.

Thanks!

Mark

 

I swapped mine out with out pulling inner fender liners or shock mounts.

Barney

 

Me too. If your heads are clean re-surfacing the manifolds should take care of your leaks.

 

Yeah, but my fender liners are already on the garage floor... Any tips from those of you who did remove them for this job?

The heads look good, but have soot and that sort of thing on the mounting surfaces. Should I hit them with a surface prep wheel to clean them up

What's the right anti-seize for the bolts? I'm assuming the regular stuff won't handle the heat well enough.

Mark

 

The liners will go back in one piece. It takes some effort but once its twisted and positioned right everything will line up.

 

No input on the hi-temp grease/anti-seize in my original post? Searching isn't yielding anything other than "Ford has..."

Mark

 

I would recommend using new bolts and I don't use any type of anti-sieze.

I also would suggest leaving the head surface alone as you might create more of a problem.

 

If it was me I would use antisieze just in case you have to take them off again and the antisieze from the parts store will work fine.

 

On the fender liners, if your shock mounts are installed, you need to cant the fender liner toward the outside of the truck so the liner will clear the top of the shock, then sneak the outer edge under the fender.

On the anti-seize, I decided to try the purple caliper pin grease, which states it has close to a 3k degree drop point, it's been over a month now, and it is still purple and greasy. All I'm concerned with is protecting the threads from rust... I had a heck of a time getting my passenger side manifold off.

 

Thanks Clay. I did pick up new bolts the other day from the Ford store, but forgot to ask them my other questions. So you wouldn't clean up the mounting surfaces on the head, at all?

I'll try that on the liners. It may have been your post I was remembering regarding the grease, but I was thinking it was for the mounting surfaces, not just the bolts. Living here in paradise , I don't worry about the bolts rusting much. I had no trouble getting mine out.

Mark

 

On this note, I believe I have a leaking exhaust manifold on the driver's side as well. How big of a battle is it going to be removing the stinkin' things... busted bolts, stripped bolts, etc. Should I just go buy 5 gallons of penetrating oil and pour it on the motor?

 

Just did the manifolds on mine the other day. Ended up cutting all the bolts off just behind the manifold and using heat and a vicegrip for removal of the remainder of the bolts from the heads. Of course, the engine was on a stand and not in the truck. The bolts were all siezed in the manifolds, took some more heat and an air hammer to remove them. They were all coated with antisieze especially the part that passes through the manifold, before being installed. We just used regular gray antsieze. If I had some, we would have used the copper stuff.

 

We also used Roloc wheels to clean both the manifold and head surfaces and I put gaskets in there, since there was no time to have the manifolds resurfaced.