Well, looks like it is the down pipe on the F450. The cat off the parts truck fits just like the hollow one ByrdDog sent - hanging down too far. So, I'm trying to wiggle it around, and I feel roughness around the downpipe at the flange - it's dark and I don't see well. I look closer and there are marks all around it. I think they're from a chain. I think the thieves hooked a chain around the exhaust pipe. Why the hell not? They hooked one to the front bumper, rear bumper, and headache rack. I guess they wanted more torque from a mid-truck attach point when they were yanking those ATMs out of the convenience store.

So, will that pipe come out the bottom of the truck without too much work? I got a replacement off the parts truck.

I have a broken sway bar downlink(?) control link? whatever that short rod is called. Looks straightforward, but nothing ever is. The nut is an odd side, I got an 18 line wrench on it, couldn't break it, then put my foot on it, and it broke my wrench. Makes me wonder if those nuts might be reverse thread for some reason? It wasn't a Chinese wrench, I don't think, lol. It's been broke at least the last two trips, I don't know how long, but I expect that's why my front tire got all scalloped, so I want to replace it before these new ones get ruined. Might have to take it to a shop. Should be a simple job, two nuts. Prolly charge $500 at the stealership.

I'm leaving for LA in the morning - I put off messing with that link too long, so maybe I find some place on the road tow install the new one. BTW, I'm budgeting $2200 for 350 gallons of diesel. It costs me about a nice car payment now to fill up my tank. Prolly $350 a tank in CA.

You know the test where you see how fast the oil filter fills up when you crank the engine - how do you do that on an Eseries? I had that deal a while back where someone swapped in a cheap oil filter into a Motorcraft box at Walmart, and it had that funky plastic clip. I forget what I did with that, and I'm wondering how I know that oil is circulating through the filter and not just passing it by.without getting filtered.

 

I had to cut the downpipe to get it out of my F350. I actually think it was all the heat shielding snagging on stuff while i was trying to pull it down. If you don't have all that aluminum foil-looking crap wrapped around it, it might slide out. The higher off the ground you can get it, the better.

 

Thanks, BD. I'm going to change out the oil cooler on this truck, so wondering if it'll be any easier to get that downpipe out with the top of the engine off. I'll leave for now, until I get the oil flushed out of the block, then try to get it off.

Occurs to me to confirm that I'm just getting the exhaust down pipe, not the y-pipe going to the exhaust manifolds and EGR cooler. I don't recall seeing heat shielding on that pipe.

 

You shouldn't have to do anything to the y-pipe to get the downpipe off, but I've always had to loosen the up-pipes at the manifolds in order to get the collector to mate up to the turbo when reinstalling.