Not too long ago correct exhaust manifolds were not on the shelf of local parts houses or at dealerships in my area and myself and my competition usually milled known problem manifolds and used various tools and methods to get things in order and often brazed cracked manifolds. Y block Fords usually required brazing as did some styles on small block Chevys. Maybe a lot more incidentals were dealt with in house in the not so distant past.
It doesnât make economic sense anymore to r&r most exhaust manifolds if they are older. The flange hardware twists off, the tubes warp (ex gm), the heat shields rot offâŠ
My tb recently had cracked manifold. Heat shield was half gone, hardware rusted in place, twisted off all three flange bolts and it cracked in half when I tossed in the grass. Brand new manifold with heat shield and all the hardware and gaskets was $105. Youâd be making peanuts if you professionally welded it, drilled and tapped the flange bolt holes and then struggled to get the holes to line up again, tool or not. Plus you still have to buy the shield gaskets and hardwareâŠgood luck.
Just heard back from the certified dealer. Fuel pump gasket causing the anti freeze leak. Right manifold broken bolt.
My fuel pump is only 2 years old 
They quoted me about 350 for fuel pump and 1100 for broken manifold bolt. My personal mechanic quoted me 900 for both.
While my Jeep has been a money pit this year, Iâm actually pretty relieved it wasnât due to the internal repair job.
Do you mean water pump?
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Yes⊠water pump. My water pump is only 2 years old. Also had a new one installed 2 years ago, not a refurbished one. Hopefully this one lasts longer once itâs installed.
Iâve got 2 of those in my toolbox drawer 
I thought the only mechanics who had those or even knew what they were, were OLD has beens like me.
Iâm not some young whipper snapper freshly âgraduatedâ from UTI 
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I hated getting called in at 3 AM to confirm a UTI.
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Thereâs a fairly young guy at work who âgraduatedâ from UTI, apparently a few years back
His skills . . . or rather, lack thereof . . . are a joke
Itâs amazing that he paid a lot of money to those guys . . . and he doesnât even understand the fundamentals
A few weeks ago, I was told to help him with an ac problem, after heâd been stuck for several hours.
I went over and asked him where he was at
It turns out the guy basically canât interpret a wiring diagram . . .
And on top of that, he had pretty much no idea how an automotive ac system works.
In the end, it was me who figured everything out
UTI is/was a joke as far as Iâm concerned
they lied to the kids, charged them a lot of money, and then sent them out in the world completely underprepared to actually work on vehicles
Come to think of it, theyâre worse than a joke
They might meet the definition of âfraudâ . . .
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Many of these for profit schools are a joke. Iâve interviewed a few people who graduated from the on-line university - âUniversity of Phoenixâ. One guy supposedly graduated top of his class. His skills were a joke. I think I interviewed one more person from them a year laterâŠsame thing. I no longer will consider a candidate with a degree from that college.
My Sisters Step-Son went to SUNY Canton for a degree in automotive technology. Almost every dealer in the area were trying to recruit him. School has a good reputation. And from what Iâve seen heâs pretty knowledgeable. Some programs are very very good.
Well, at least they have a certificate certifying that they survived a Urinary Tract Infection.
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The local community college offers the basic truck and automobile courses and the instructors of a few years ago were quite good it seems and they would personally recommend students that they recognized to be talented and motivated. It seems that about 1/3 of those who enter a class are actually working towards a career and of those only a handful can successfully master the somewhat difficult course work. Those few who finish and get their instructorâs recommendations have no problem finding their first job.
For profit schools, especially those on line, strike me as being nothing but money pits.
Im not familiar with UTI or other automotive schools, but Iâll still draw a parable to going to college. I learned a lot in college, but it wasnât practical knowledge I needed to do my job. The first couple of years provided that.
As part of my job, one assignment was to create a task for a group of materials engineering students at Johns Hopkins University. I had a specific task that I was going to do, and I assigned t to them. They did a horrible job. I contacted the group lead every other week to get a status. She didnât like me calling her apparently, and eventually a boy took her place. I tried to explain what I wanted, they didnât listen, and turned in an unsatisfactory report. I ended up doing the job myself.
For a while I wondered what kind of dopes they had enrolled at JHU, but eventually remembered how little I knew of practical interest to the wire rod mill I worked in. They were like me and most other college grads. Lots of theory, no experience.
+1
Over the space of 30 years as a HS Counselor, I was able to see the vast differencesâin terms of both cost and qualityâbetween the for-profit diploma mills and the free or low-cost programs offered at the countyâs vocational school and, later, by the local community college.
The students who ignored my advice, and decided to give their hard-earned money to Lincoln Tech and other for-profit automotive tech schools frequently returned to tell me that I had been right, and that they had learned very little in exchange for the outrageously high tuition cost.
The county vocational school had always offered an excellent-quality program in automotive technology, and about 10 years before I retired, a few of the stateâs community colleges began offering auto tech programs that were affiliated with various manufacturers. And, those 2 year community college auto tech programs cost FAR less in total than the 10-12 month programs at the for-profit diploma mills.
Depending on which community college one chose to attend, a student could receive specific training for Toyota, or Ford, or GM vehiclesâin addition to general automotive technology training. These programs gave students part-time employment at dealerships while they were in school, and they were guaranteed employment at a dealership upon graduation. At one point, Ford was even giving each one of their community college graduates a new Ford Escort, along with a job guarantee.
And thatâs a big problem
Many of the UTI âgraduatesâ Iâve known over the years donât even have the theory
If you donât even have that . . .
My local community college encourages the students to take on projects comparable to their training. Without hands on experience thereâs no assurance that a student actually understands the technology they can recite or learn to correctly choose the correct answer.
Iâll always remember the young man who didnât survive his first month with me. He picked up a work order on a late model car with the complaint âruns ruff and stalls at idleâ and when it occurred to me that he had been sitting in the car with a scan tool for quite a while I checked on him. He had found the cylinder number that was misfiring but the string of codes had him baffled. I had him come to the rear of the car and listen to the exhaust to hear the obvious sound of a leaking valve. I canât imagine how long it would have taken him to run a compression test on the engine if left on his own. And other than a quick and clean way to determine which cylinder was missing that $can tool was useless. Fifty years earlier any good shade tree mechanic with an 8th grade education would have known what was wrong before getting the car in the shop.
To go along with the example related by Rod Knox, the service manager hired a young man who held an Associateâs Degree in Diesel Technology from a state backed university. He knew little to nothing about gasoline cars and I have no idea why the SM even hired him as our only diesel cars were VW. So on Day One his first test was a VW diesel with a âNo Startâ complaint.
I told him that usually what happened was that the glow plug fuse failed and people would run the battery dead trying to start it. I even told him why the glow plug fuse fails and where it was located. I went on to other things and noticed a long time later he had his head under the hood still. Going over I found that he had been checking glow plugs and was about (for some unexplicable reason) to pull the fuel injectors out. He had the battery charger connected and gave me a blank look when I asked about the glow plug fuse. I popped the cover off and with a fingernail pulled the fuse a bit to reveal the heat related crack. Now go get a fuse and get this thing out of here. (And that did fix the car.)
After less than 6 months he decided that auto repair was not his thing and moved to MO to become a police officer. Really nice guy but always wanted to work from Z to A instead of A to Z. Iâve worked with a few guys who seemed to always skip the basics and make things worse than they really are.
So, the FP fuse popped on my kids car. Should have checked that first? On side of road?
These motors are infamous for broken exhaust manifold bolts, so no surprise there if they are original. There was even a recall on some years/models, IIRC. Not for my '07 Ram, so I lived with it until I sold it.