With tranny in its place, its a sonofabug 😀 of a job. Best i can say and would do, is dorman uppies. I have bubbles. Only because i got excited and didnt torque down in sequence. Do yourself the favor and have time as your friend, snugging bolts/nuts in stagger. What previous post mentioned, if bolt and collector are bad, probably the pipe bad, too..its why i mention the dormans(had for 80 bucks on ebay)

 

 

I wanted to close the loop on my exhaust leak issue with my passenger side up pipe. The problem turned out to be the bolts (shown in the pics) were indeed completely rusted out and missing in the middle. With no tension on this connection, exhaust air was escaping and making the typical exhaust leak sound. I took the truck into a local shop that specializes in diesels. I had never used them before but did scope them out about 5 years ago when I bought my 7.3 truck. They said the simplest and cheapest fix would be to extract what remained of the original 2 bolts and nuts and replace them with new bolts/nuts ones. Their opinion was the up pipes looked to be in decent shape despite appearing to be the 17 year old originals. I decided to let them do this job.

There are bolts/nuts available from Ford for this application ($25.06 USD) for two. Sorry I do not have the product number and the shop didn't detail it on my invoice. The labour ran about 2.5 hours ($170.78 USD) to get the old, rusted remains out and install the new bolts/nuts. No surprise the air impact wrenches didn't work so they had to use heat and then punch and drill out the remains of the original bolts. They said it was a bear of a job. Before I left the truck with them, I asked them to do both sides (driver and passenger up pipe connections) since I figured when one side goes ... the other would follow. When I picked up my truck, they only did the passenger side with the original leak.

They said although the other side also had rusted bolts. However, they were mostly complete and the connection was not leaking. They also inspected the driver side manifold and said although it was still sealing with no leaks, it was "severely rusted" and they were afraid if they tried to remove/replace the driver side up pipe bolts and nuts, they would damage the up pipe/manifold connection and create a much bigger and more expensive problem. Their opinion is I should get at least 2-3 years out of the existing manifolds and up pipes before having to swap them all out because of rust decay. I'm good with saving the money now and waiting until I have to this bigger job.

I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way things ended up. Dechert's Diesel & Auto Repairs in Elmira Ontario were fair, fast and only did what they thought should be done right now. A tip of the hat to Owner Kyle & Mechanic Nathan with whom I have no other connection with. I'm just a happy customer who will be back when I need their help and expertise again as they seem to know their diesel stuff. BTW - one of their shop hobbies is building, maintaining and racing a diesel "sled pulling truck" which also gave me confidence to give them a try in the first place. I'm glad I did.

 

Good on them, all too often we hear a story like they replaced both exhaust manifolds and the up pipes because they were so bad that they couldn't patch them up and yuuuuuuuge bill to go with it. Thanks for closing out on the repair.

 

I always like to close out the story and you're so right Mark. Most shops today automatically want to replace stuff ... heck I can do that too. Finding any service provider who actually thinks repair first ... now that's rare. It probably helps they are located in the heart of Mennonite country and some of the know-how, skills and quality standards these folks have are truly amazing. They also tend to be as honest as the day is long.