I was doing a visual inspection on my F-250 (2019 6.2L, just over 19k miles) this morning and I noticed the heat shield on the right side exhaust manifold is cracked. It appears the factory over-torqued the fastening nut and created a tear.

Is it worth it to do any sort of proactive maintenance (spark plugs at 50k, loosen exhaust manifold nuts and apply anti-seize) or just let it ride? I’d like to keep this truck for 10+ years, but it’s also possible I’m going to sell it when I move out of state.

 

Proactive maintenance can be a good thing. I always try to catch things before they go to far and create other issues. I myself will be changing the plugs out early also - just not sure how early.

 

For sure. I work on heavy machinery and most major repairs could have been avoided if the maintenance was done at the proper intervals.

However, I don’t want to screw up anything like snapping the exhaust manifold studs off and making it worse. It seems that cracked manifolds are a common issue and I’d like to save myself the hassle of seized/stripped nuts and snapped studs if I can by doing a little preventative maintenance now.

 

I would ask the dealer for at least the replacement part. Shouldn't the whole thing be covered by warranty?

 

Since it’s not really causing any issues at the moment, I doubt they will do anything about it. I’ll ask at next oil change.