I bought my '87 F-150 from my uncle who took great care of it. It's got a 302 and the exhaust has been giving it problems from day one. He had to replace the section of pipe exiting behind the passenger side wheel twice due to rusting. The third time it rusted out he had to fix the fender where it had rusted right above it. From there he just had a local specialty exhaust shop split the pipe behind the cat, run glass pax and send them straight out the back with chrome tips. Well, one tip just up and fell off going down the highway, and the other came off somewhere just tooling around off road. I don't beat up my truck off road and didn't bottom it out so I looked and the pipes were rusted again. I only have about 104K on the truck and didn't think it should go through 4 sets of pipes. What could be the problem? I'm not getting any service lights or smoke from the pipes so I don't know. Any help would be appreciated.
Andy

 

there are a couple of factors you need to look at. one is what climate do you live in (road salt,other chemicals) will speed the decay of you exhaust. another thing to look at is how much short start it and shut it off driving do you do. if you dont get the pipes (hot) normal operating temp the water produced will not burn off and there for it will sit in the pipe and rust off.