Hi all,

Bought an 02 7.3 within the past year. The one bad rust spot on it is the passenger side exhaust manifold / head (see photos). No signs of an exhaust leak yet, not even from the horrendous manifold. I have riffraff manifolds sitting in my basement and plan to install those and up pipes in 5 weeks.

My bigger concern here is preserving the cylinder head and exhaust ports. Its not rotted through but clearly has flaking rust. I am planning to clean this entire area with a needle scaler and follow w wire wheel and pneumatic sander before applying the new manifolds with gaskets. My question for you all is how to go about running the truck going forward to keep these heads for a few more years. I live in NJ where depending on the severity of winter it sees salt. My thoughts are to apply a rust converter on the sanded and cleaned surface and let it sit for a few days while I have the truck down. Then before winter thoroughly clean and degrease the head and paint on a surface shield, fluid film, or wool wax type product, avoiding getting any of that on my new manifolds as best as possible.

here are some photos. Cylinder 1 seems to be worst. This is from me going after it with a small wire brush as best I can around the shock mount and fender liner.

 

I think cleaning and applying Fluid Film regularly (and checking it monthly) would be wise. That's a staggering amount of rust for any climate, so you must get a lot of salt water splash into that area. Fluid Film (or any other petro product) will burn off, so re-applying fairly frequently will be needed.

 

yeah agreed on the reapply of fluid film or surface shield regularly. Its weird because the driver side looks nothing like this. Truck was a CA truck til 7 years ago when it was introduced to NE salt. Also PO applied a rubberized undercoating and I think thats what some of this crap is / what cause rust to accelerate

 

You definitely want to get that cleaned up to at least prevent it from holding moisture. You could try hitting it with a couple coats of VHT Flameproof. I used it on my old set of manifolds and it did hold up surprisingly. I had them on there for close to 3 years I think and maybe just started to see a light speckling of rust showing up. I figure that ain't bad considering it sees close to 100 miles of oilfield every single day. The color didn't last though, so I'd stick with something simple like black or gray.

https://www.vhtpaint.com/high-heat/v...eproof-coating

 

thanks! Yeah shes not a show truck and wont be. I plan to use black. Id just like to keep it on the road for another 5-10. Its a baby at 213k on clock.

 

Went out with my compact needle scaler and small pneumatic die grinder with wire wheel to hit where i could around the fender liner. This is maybe 10 minutes of work, if that. I think I’ll pull away the fender liner and hit everything to see where I’m at. Then when i pull the manifolds in a few weeks Ill clean really well and paint. Semi annual surface shield applications after that.

i just worked on the heads. I obviously dont care about the manifolds as theyre being trashed.

 

Major improvement for sure. Not trying to jinx ya or anything, but if you're planning to swap the manifolds in 3 weeks then you might want to start soaking those bolts now. I'm kinda partial to Kroil when I can get it, but by the look of them anything is likely to help.

https://www.kroil.com/product/kroil-original-penetrant/

Dang I'd never checked out there website before. They've got several products I'd never heard of. They even got some rust specific stuff you might be interested in.

 

thanks! Ill check that out. Every week or so after some long driving I hit them w PB blaster while the engine is hot. Whats the best way to get at driver side bolts in your opinion? From the top of the engine bay? Really dont want to pull my oil cooler as I just resealed and painted it and those OEM gaskets arent cheap

 

i am planning to cut the manifold bolts right behind the manifold itself and using a torch, penetrant, and stud extractor.

 

I went through the fender well. I don't remember if I pulled the tire or not but almost positive I didn't remove the fender liner. I used an impact and an assortment of extensions, probably a wobble too. The oil cooler didn't really come into play at all for me. I do have to admit though that all the bolts on both sides came right out and probably could have been reused. Where I live though your damn lucky if they even put sand on the roads for ice and snow,

 

lucky you- where are you from?

yeah I may start the driver side bolts slowly tightening and loosening to see if I can work em out. They look in good shape- BUT this is also the original manifold and at 22 years old now I gotta think those bolt shoulders are seized in the manifold. I think regardless I am pulling this motor and doing everything on a stand. Have a 5 1/2 day stretch of doing this and corrosealing my frame and chassis parts day and night

 

The ones that got enough of a head that a socket would actually still work I'd use that torch to heat the bolt as much as you feel comfortable. Then hit it with that penetrant while it's hot. I've had some luck with that technique once or twice before.

 

propane or acetylene?

 

Smallish town in north central Oklahoma, Ponca City. Last I checked we're just under 30,000 people. There's a Walmart, probably 8 Mexican restaurants, half a dozen bars, 1 strip club but technically it's in another county, and 47 churches and I don't mean the chicken joint.

 

hahaha nice. 2 of my good buddies went to OU. Definitely a better environment for keeping away the rust!