I took on the task to replace my manifolds, '99 XTL 5.4, leaking passenger side. You know this story. But after 4 days working on this I am reaching my limit. Passenger side had two studs where the nuts rusted off, back two. The rest where so bad I ended up cutting them of with a dremel and cut-off wheel. All the studs backed out easily (I had enough thread on them to place two nuts, locked together, worked great) except the back top one. Would not budge. Threads where so rusted they stripped when I locked the nuts together. Vice grips..no go. Took the dremel and ground flats on 4 sides, then had a better bite with vice grips, still no go. Added heat and drove a socket onto the squared up stud, still nothing, just rounds off the corners. Then I cut a slot and inserted a flat head screw driver, still no go, just broke off the tip of the stud. Took dremel and made big flat on top and on bottom, got great bite with vice grips, thought it was moving, nope, just twisted the stud right off. Now almost flush, about 1/8" exposed. Ok get out the drill, make a 7/32 hole in the stud, inserted the #3 easy-out, no go, just tears out the inside of the stud. 2 more attempts, no change. Now hole too big for a #3, enlarged hole a little and inserted the #4 easy-out, Great bite, then POW snapped off the #4 easy-out in the stud. Ok, going to drill and tap....NOW I have the problem I can't drill. HELP!!! I cannot make any headway. Just keep destroying drill bits!! Is it possible to drill out an Easy Out? I don't know what else to do

Any suggestions are welcome.

 

what are you replacing them with?

 

Pacesetter shorty headers. If I ever get that far!

 

Been there, you'll need to weld a nut on the stud, and it will come right out. The only way to drill out an easy out is with a carbide drill bit.

 

Did you by chance use any penetrating oil?

 

let us know if you can feel a difference in power and/or sound. curious

 

Yeah...I heard good things about the Banks shorty torque tubes. Might do those in a few years

 

Yes, sorry the orig. post was so long I missed that. They were soaked in PB Blaster for days before and every time I walk up to this "PROJECT" and leave the "PROJECT" I soak everything with PB. It is now an Official Project...not just replacing the headers.

I bought a carbide dremel bit...a diamond dremel bit. So far still very little progress...but Saturday I have the whole day ahead of me let's hope for success.

 

Any progress, i will be tackling this job soon....

 

Yeah, should of just drilled it out and put a helicoil in it if you didn't have access to a welder. how long has the manifold been leaking? how many miles on the truck?

 

Reading your experience makes my stomach flip, but I'm still going to get mine done. I have the last week in October off and plan on replacing the passenger side manifold (dime-sized hole in the front) on my 4.6

The old nuts holding the manifold on are so rusted I doubt I'll get one off with a wrench/ratchet. I plan on grinding down to good metal and welding a clean nut on. We'll see how it goes...

Good Luck

New manifold, Fel-pro gaskets and Dornan hardware for me:

 

Well, great work! You have helped me to improve my knowledge about this field. Thank you so much for sharing.
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My experience is that you cannot drill a broken E-Z Out with anything. Large cities often have a TAP-EX shop that will electrically disintegrate a broken tap or E-Z Out. It is electrically dissolved and deposited on a probe. Your location probably won't have one of those shops. I concur with the suggestion to weld to the stud remnant but I have never seen this done. My experience has been to sit there and drill and drill all the parts of the stud that you can see. You will be drilling all around the broken E-Z Out remnant. You keep drilling and, in time, the whole thing will come loose and fall apart. Use tweezers to extract fragments. After this succeeds, you have a ragged hole that is not of the proper configuration for the original size stud. I then tap the hole to the next larger size. You may have to enlarge the diameter of the hole in the manifold to allow passage of the oversize stud.
Recommend that you get a bushel of high speed drill bits from a vendor, e.g., Harbor Freight. I have a Drill Doctor bit sharpener. I sharpen and drill, sharpen and drill and so forth. As you spend hours, just think that you are not paying someone else to do this. Remember that you must keep the metal being drilled lubricated with oil. Carbide tipped masonry bits work at times. When the masonry tip gets hot, it often separates from the main body of the bit. You will need more than two masonry tip bits if you try them. Load you quiver with sharp drill bits and get going. Saetta

 

updates??

 

UPDATE! Passenger side manifold replaced!

As stated I was off work last week and the exhaust manifold was one project I was planning to do. I started Wednesday with the idea if things got real bad I had a couple of days to get the job done, fortunately I didn't need them...

I started in the afternoon

This is the manifold with the inner fender liner removed, you can see my half-assed temporary repair to the hole in the front of the manifold (hose-clamp, JB weld - actually worked for a little while)

Seriously rusted hardware

My original plan was to grind down and weld onto the old hardware to get it out. I found the Craftsman bolt-out kit to be a much easier way to go. Best $20 I've spent in a while, I would have paid $20 just for the #4 - it got every nut out.


Only 3 studs came out with the nuts

I needed to hammer the #4 bolt out onto most of the nuts to get it to bite. The top 4 no problem, the bottom 4 were an issue with the manifold in the way. So I got out the sawz-all and cut-off wheel

Installed the 3 new studs. I contemplated replacing them all, but after checking to make sure there was enough threads on the old studs to permit full thread engagement with the new manifold I left them alone. Also cleaned up the gasket area with a 3M surface conditioning disc

New stud, old stud

New manifold installed, copper stuff around hardware is anti-seize

The old hardware keeping the manifold attached to the exhaust was maybe 1/4" diameter? Not sure if that was original equipment? Seemed inadequate, especially after I checked the torque spec for them (35ft/lb IIRC). The new manifold came tapped for M10x1.50. So I used some studs and nuts and torqued to spec.

No exhaust noise from the truck and my MPGs are already showing an major improvement! Hope the info helps anyone attempting this... Good Luck.