What is this part? A friend at work says he is having a leak develop here. It is a 2003 5.4L

 

A little bit of googling has led me to believe it is the coolant crossover pipe. Any tips on changing the gaskets out will be appreciated greatly

 

It is the coolant crossover and you can't change a gasket to fix it. You have to replace the intake manifold to fix. Many people prefer the one from the dealership but the Dorman intake works pretty well if you follow the directions.

If he's going to do it I would also suggest doing the plugs, coils, and fuel injectors at the same time. He'll have everything apart anyways and it will all be easy to access. Plan on about 2 days to do it right.

 

Oh dang, I looked up and found this. These won’t work?

 

I don't think they will work, everyone that's had a leak there that I know of has replaced the intake manifold. I've never seen references to anyone just replacing the crossover. Honestly I'd go with the manifold anyways as if it's similar to mine the integrity of the manifold itself may be compromised. Mine was completely disintegrated at the bottom.

It's really not that hard to do, just time consuming.

 

I appreciate your help! I will relay this info and see what he wants to do

 

Replace gasket

2003 has good manifolds, not like the earlier ones that degraded and cracked.

 

Right , they are suppose to be anyway. 03 model years are molded from a better composite material.

Youngone2012, if you don't mind, let us know if it was just the cross-over gasket...curios.

 

Well mine at least had no issues at 200k. So was put on new engine. Still no issues at 245k. Cotrasts with pics i seen here of earlier ones literaly crumbling apart, causing gasket leakage. Still keeping fingers crossed anyway for any plastic 15 yrs old.

 

Yea, I haven't heard of any 03's suffering a crack manifold yet. Why I'm curious I guess. I haven't heard of gasket problems either, but it's most likley what went bad in this case and how it should be lol.