On a 2012 Lariat, is there an upgrade to a manual Warn hub, and just ditch the IWEs??

 

No. Unfortunately the only options are Ford brand parts or lesser quality aftermarket replacements such as doo-doo, er, I mean Dorman. Personally I've never had any problems with my IWE equipped trucks, but I live in a salt free environment and keep my undersides pretty clean and free of accumulated crud.

 

I've replaced 3 IWE's on these trucks. The first I replaced with a Motocraft part. The second and third were Dorman parts. The Dorman ones were pretty much identical to the Motocraft part I got but were much less. The last Dorman I bought looked like it had the BorgWarner logo on it. With that said, I wouldn't hesitate to use a Dorman part here even though they can be hit or miss in a lot of applications.