Your off by one year, the '98 used the same intake as the '96-'97. The PI
heads were a change in '99 and were part of the 35 horsepower gain. The
'94-'95 used the 5.0.
--
Mike
Silver 10th Anniversary Cobra Coupe
---

William wrote:
> C Miller did truly imply:
>
>> Well the intake manifold cracked on my 98 GT right behind the
>> alternator - I found a TSB on it and talked to some locals that knew
>> about it too, but the dealer is looking at the VIN and saying
>> "doesn't apply to your car". - Can anyone else who has had this
>> problem let me know how they handled it?
>
> As I come in from the garage after adding coolant in the final step of
> changing the cracked plastic intake manifold on my 96 GT, I see
> someone with the same problem.
>
> Seems Ford had an obvious problem with the injected-molded intake
> manifolds found on the 4.6 SOHC & DOHC engines,though the singles were
> more prone than the doubles.
> All of this was supposed to be fixed in 98, and indeed the problem(s)
> dramatically declined at that time. But I have heard of a few 98's
> using surplus 94-96 (designed) manfiolds, which I discount as false
> information. Your 98' car should have the PI heads, which take a
> different intake than the 94-96 non-PI heads which leads me to believe
> that you in fact do NOT have a surplus 94-96 intake but did receive a
> defective one all the same.
> In my instance, it cracked on the intake runner for #1 cylinder,
> leaning out that chamber and burning the valve. No compression on that
> one. I had available another engine, a '98 with less miles than my
> '96 (48K vs 74K). The machine shop(s) I went to all wanted nearly
> $1600 for a valve job on the aluminum heads on the '96 and I thought
> the cost a bit prohibitive just for the valve job as that money did
> nothing to fix the cause of the problem, the cracked manifold.
> I did look for manifolds, and with the price I received from my Ford
> dealer ($650), I would have had nearly $2K wrapped up in just the top
> end.
> The problem with my recalled manifold (there was indeed a recall,
> unbeknown to me) was the time limit of seven years which had slipped
> past by a scant 4 months. I was told by the dealer and by other
> members of this newsgroup that the manifolds were prone to crack at
> the 70K mile mark.
>
> Mine cracked at 71,000.