My tow vehicle needed some love to pass inspection... the passenger side exhaust manifold cracked (6yrs ago) and it finally got loud enough for them to fail me. Toyota wanted some $250+ for the part and so I figured I'd try one of those cheap shorty header solutions on ebay for $150 for both sides.... and it showed up looking pretty darn good - TIG'd 304 stainless with all the gaskets and hardware. I don't know how they do that for that price but... they were a perfect fit.
"This ought to be easy"... You would think that a truck you can lay under without a jack, with room all around the engine would be easy to get a manifold off of. You can think that but you would be wrong. To get them off I had to open the motor mounts and jack the engine up as far as it would go. I needed the oxy torch, a 24" breaker bar, cold chisels, Dremel with cutoff wheels, impact gun, homemade "leverage engines" including welding an old wrench to a nut... and I broke 2 14mm sockets from using a jack handle on the breaker bar. I got rust and ancient road salt in my eyes because the goggles kept filling with sweat and I had to take them off. Every single bolt was at exactly the wrong angle to apply force and provided an opportunity to augment the english language with a new "word". I have done some pretty awful jobs on some pretty weird machinery but this one is easily top five most irritating effort ever. It took 12hrs over 2 days. To top it all off when I was putting the tires back on I broke a wheel stud because I used impact gun to try to save 30 seconds. From now on every job begins with STEP ONE: Remove engine from vehicle.
Apparently I should be able to remove the pan by removing the trans mounts and jacking up the tran as high as possible...ugh!
