Originally Posted by JCooper

Oh my god man! At least they could have done the other side while they had the engine out, for $1300! That's the worst one I've heard yet. Glad to hear it runs good though.

Originally Posted by firehose777

Yeah tell me about it. I do 95% of my own maintenance and repairs on my vehicles, but this one, I just didn't have the time or patience to deal with. It sucked, like I said, I even went to the dealer with my set of shorty drill bits and easy outs...they had the motor jacked and everything. I took one look in and of course it was the stud behind the shock tower. I turned right around and said good luck, call me when it's done.

Originally Posted by kozal01

Your experience seems to be the exception. I'm very confident in my wrenching skills but I will honestly say doing the passenger manifold on my 05 was the most difficult thing I've ever done on any of my trucks. Perhaps because none of your studs needed to be extracted helped immensely but that is usually not the case, I had to extract three broken studs. Also, your arms and hands must be tiny because there was no possible way that I could have done that swap without removing the starter. Come to think of it, even with the engine raised up there was no way the manifold was going been come out of the engine compartment with the starter in place.
There is a reason why shops around here charge almost $1000 to do this job, it's not easy.