Im on my second dodge diesel. Love the cummins, dont know how i ever drove a ford, but the 1 peice exhaust manifold has cracked on both my trucks. I sold the old truck before i ever fixed it, but on my new truck i cracked it so bad more exhaust was leaking than spinning the turbo. I finally got my new ATS 2 peice manifold and tried to put it on tonight, but EVERY SINGLE bolt i took out of the factory manifold had been cross threaded! EVERY..F***IN...ONE! These are the FACTORY bolts, i clould feel that they werent right as soon as they started moving, but they were already in there and it had to come off. Somewhere there is a dude whose only job is to put already faulty exhaust manifolds on cummins motors and to top it all off the idiot is cross threading the bolts! I have to be up early tomorrow so i had to stop where i was at and borrow one of my fiancees dads trucks to drive home, and with the manifold half off i cant crank it so the mexicans at work are gonna be awful pissed at me! Oh yeah did i mention that my shiny red 8,000 pound paper wheight is sittin in the middle of my girlfriends dads warehouse (i work there) and our truck driver parked his Pete' (600 horse CAT, nice truck)in the way so i cant even get my truck out of the inside of the building, which is why the mexicans are gonna be PISSED tomorrow, sure am glad ill be in class half the day otherwise id be catching hell! Im going to the dealership near me even though i bought it used, and if they dont help im gonna call every person at dodge and tear them a new one till someone straightens this out! Anybody got any other ideas?  

Sounds like you might have to re-tap those holes.  

Yeah, the holes are gonna have to be re-tapped, and im gonna have to go up to the dodge place today and get new, bolts. I know those guys at the parts department pretty well cause of the work they did on my old truck, so im gonna try to talk them into doing the work for free if ill bring the truck to them, but i know they wont so im at least hopin to get the bolts for free...who knows...  

HEY backwoodsboy, Let us know how it turns out with the dealer, and how you got it fixed.  

Well, the parts manager wanted to help, but cause i bought it used with no warranty and it wasnt from a dealership, their hands were tied. He did hook me up as best he could with getting my new bolts here as quick as possible and for a few bucks cheaper, the bolts will be here first thing in the morning.I had him go ahead and order the double sided bolts that hold the maifold and the heat shield, cause he said they would be hard to find any where else, but then he kinda whipered that i should go down to the new fastenal place down the road and check with them, but they were all out and wouldnt have any till next week and i didnt wanna risk going cheap with some hardware store bolts since they have to deal with so much heat, so i ordered the other ones i need from the dealership, too. The parts guy carried the bolts to the guy that runs the service department cause hes a car nut and he said that he has no doubt that Cummins over torqued the bolts and the heat screwed them up so the only way they could come out was with the threads jacked up. And even though those one piece manifolds are prone to cracking he said the jacked up bolts would have made the manifold that much easier to crack. They gave me the number to CUMMINS SOUTH in Atlanta and told me to talk to them, but thats gonna be hit or miss since i didnt buy it new i have no proof that Cummins made a mistake, but we'll see.  

HEY backwoodsboy, Let us know what CUMMINS SOUTH tells you, I'm looking to buy a 2006 or 2007 5.9 and I want to know if I have a problem, how they are going to treat me !!!  

Well the economy might be in the tank but that didnt stop me from being busy at work, which is good i guess but it means i havent got a chance to call CUMMINS SOUTH, but i finally finished fixin my truck so it doesnt really matter. Im going to call them anyway just to see what they might do for me. I worked on my truck every night after work this week from around 6:00 until around 12, and finally got it done tonight. To keep from breaking the jacked up bolts off in the block, and cause hacked up bolts are hard to turn, it took two days of beng gentle and forceful at the same time just to get the manifold off. Wednesday night i had to re-tap all the holes, very carefully of course, and thursday i thought i had all my parts till i was amost done and realized i got all the gaskets except the one for the turbo side of the manifold, so we had to re-use the stock one, which leaked but not too bad, then i had to leave work early and drive down to the suburbs and sit in traffic for 2 hours to make an hour and 15 minute trip to get that gasket, otherwise i would have had to waited till the dealer near me got it monday. But its all put back together now and running better than ever thanks to my awesome ATS manifold. Sure is nice to atually get some turbo spool...not having a big ass crack helps. The old one was so bad that it came off in two seperate peices.