I personally have not. But the forum is loaded with "broken manifold bolt" and warped manifold threads. I think in my mind if they would have used studs vs bolts maybe a little less grief on our end repairing. But manufacture many years ago got away from using gaskets and went to a machined surface. They make headers for our engines, so I dont know what would keep a fellow from using the header gaskets with manifolds to help ones slightly wrapped to seal.

 

Yea,
They had to replace 5 of the bolts, they broke off because of the warping. Some engineer's bright idea, to make manufacturing easier.
I can turn a wrench, but a little beyond my expertise. Sorry about the attitude, put I am a little upset.

 

Yea I get it. A broken grade 8 bolt is a PIA to get out. Multiply by 4 or 5 would drive a guy to drink. And then some of them break off uneven and it is really difficult to drill those.

 

Yes I would, but the carry out as closed.

 

I have a 2011 5.7 hemi, 2500 Big Horn, with 69000 miles. I had to replace both manifolds because they were warped. It wasn't cheap !
Has any of you all had the same problem ?

THOUSANDS of us have had the issue, some multiple times. Waiting on new bolts myself, ARP's should be here today.

 

Only permanent solution is to plane a seasoned cast iron set after thermal shock, or go to a 3/8" steel flange aftermarket header.

 

If you switch to grade 8 hardware ,you can just about be certain to pull the threads from the heads . No the bolts won’t break anymore however the heads will need to be heli coiled .

 

I bought my 2103 5.7 RAM 1500 with this problem already starting at 60k miles. I found 3 broken bolts on the passenger side and 1 on the driver side.

Yes, the cast iron warps with age. Any welder can tell you the hot metal shrinks as it cools, so the casting gets its mating face machined but still has cooling stresses built in. Over time and many heat/cool cycles, this stress works out and causes a warp. Mine was over a 3mm deflection at the back of the passenger side.

The wrong answer is just to use stronger bolts because no bolt of that diameter is stronger than 1/2" cast iron, so the aluminum threads in the head will strip eventually, or the bolts will keep breaking.

No gasket is thick enough to handle 3mm of deflection.

The right answer depends on how much work you want to do and how much money you want to spend.

If you want to spend as little as possible:

1. remove the guards and manifolds​

2. the easiest way to remove broken steel bolts from aluminum heads is using a wire welder to build up enough metal to weld a nut on or be able to turn with pliers - youtube has videos​

3. use a straight edge to see where the warp is worst - be sure to check length, width, and diagonal​

4. use an angle grinder to get the worst parts of it levelled out​

5. keep repeating steps 3 and 4 until no part is more than 1/2mm out of flat​

6. use a large sanding block or a section of 2" - 4" square steel tubing and 60grit to get the remaining 1/2mm flat​

7. stuff paper towels in the exhaust openings on the head​

8. scrape, sand, or wire wheel the soot and deposits from the manifold mating surface on the head​

9. do the same cleanup to the gasket and if it's in good enough shape, reuse, otherwise, replace​

10. remove the paper towels and reassemble with new bolts where the broken ones were​

​

The warpage is very unlikely to continue much past the point that it breaks bolts at 60-90k miles, but this same process works several times because the cast iron is so thick. The new cast iron manifolds are likely to do the exact same thing the original ones did after the same amount of time, but once they are "seasoned" by several thousand heat/cool cycles, the speed of warpage diminishes.

 

Quality headers will eliminate this issue.