I have a 99 F350 w/ V10 that has 3 broken exhaust manifold bolts on the drivers side. I've done several searches on the site and really ahven't found any information. Maybe my search criteria were too broad or too specific. Anyway my mechanic told me best case to drill and extract bolt stubs, worst case remove head and then do the same. They think that there's room to get a drill in while the heads are on.

Questions:

What is the incidence of this with the V10? How many others have been through it and how did it go?

With 136K miles on the truck would it make sense to have a valve job done if he has to pull the head? I know then that he would have to pull both.

Are there any after market headers that I might want to consider?

Thanks in advance for your input.

 

You may luck out and there be enought meat left to grab when you remove the manifold. I would recomend Borla headers.

 

I have two buddies with v10 SD's that have broken exhaust manifold bolts.I dont know how common it is,but I only know two v10 owners and they both have it.
One is a 99 the other is an 01.
The 99 has also blown 2 spark plugs.

 

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I'll try not to bash Ford's junk to much in this post but this truck has been far from perfect with the busted manifold bolts and junk wheel bearing being very expensive and time consuming to fix. I noticed the first one busted at about the time the warrenty was up. It didn't look to be leaking so I just left it alone. The truck then started sounding like a junk pile at idle because of a loose baffle in the muffler. So, I decided I'd get a Banks powerpack to fix both problems. I then discovered a second broken manifold bolt before touching anything and three more proceeded to pretty much fall off as soon as I touched them with a wrench. I ended up with 3 broken on the drivers side and two on the passenger side. I was able to fix all of them except for one and that was because I broke the tap off in the head on the last one. Got one of them out with a little pipe wrench and drilled the rest of them out with a close-quarter drill without having to take the heads off. Drilled them, tapped them, screwed in threaded inserts and bolted the headers on. Not a very fun job at all and under heavy load I can hear that one I couldn't fix leaking but I'll just wait till the high quality head blows a spark plug and maybe I'll fix it then. Good Luck

 

My 2000 also has 2 rusted off studs, one on each side. I'm hearing this is a common problem.