Roger2003GT

This is my first post here and I'd first like to say what a great resource this site is. Thank you to everyone who contributes their wealth of knowledge.

I did a lot of searches for cracked intake manifolds over the past couple weeks. What I found was most the cracked intakes were the older style all plastic intake. I couldn't find a picture of the problem my intake had so I thought I'd post it. My 2003 GT has the PI Intake and cracked under the crossover right under the thermostat housing. We originally thought it was a bad gasket or o-ring since the car has the "improved" intake but when we took the intake off and removed the crossover, this is what we found...



Anyone else have this problem with the PI Intake? My car is stock with 70,000 miles and I don't run it hard. My sister owned the car until about 62,000 miles and I know she didn't run it hard either. Should I expect this to occur again in a few years? I would have replaced it with an aftermarket all metal intake but funds are kind of tight right now so I just replaced it with the stock PI intake. Pretty straight forward swap with the help of a mechanically inclined friend and a resource like this.

jEEd

did you replace your intake manifold with the "newer" Stock PI Intake Manifold? as in with the aluminum crossover where you will not have that cracking problem anymore.

and that's pretty common spot for it to crack, CobraStangGT16's intake manifold cracked and he just bought a new one and swaped it in.

most 99-01 Mustangs with the PI Intake w/o the aluminum crossover either had/will have this problem

Roger2003GT

I replaced it with the same manifold. Car is a 2003 GT. The manifold that was on there is the newer PI manifold with aluminum crossover. The picture above is with the crossover removed. The crack is underneath the crossover on the thremostat side.

I was under the impression that all 2003+ cars came with the PI intake. Am I missing something here?

jEEd

all the 99-04 Mustang GT's came w/ the PI intake manifold, just the earlier years came with the PI intake manifold without the "Aluminum Crossover" while the newer GT's have the updated manifold. guess you lucked out and got a pi intake w/o the aluminum crossover on your 03 gt

BlackMage

all 01 or 02 and up had the aluminum crossovers on the IM. i had an updated NPI manifold and it cracked in the same exact spot yours did. looks almost identical actuially. i just bought a new PI manifold and changed my thermostat to 180 degrees. im hoping that should help counteract the heat from the coolant

Roger2003GT

Nope. The intake that cracked does have the aluminum crossover. The crossover is removed in the picture. The crack is below the crossover. We didn't notice the crack until we removed the crossover.

We changed the thermostat to a 165* that my buddy had from his Mustang.

CobraStangGT16

Wow....thats a first for me...

As mentioned, I just cracked mine and replaced it with the OEM plastic crossover for $90...you should NEVER crack a 2003 IM...

Take it to Ford...thats gotta be a defect. The aluminums never crack.

Roger2003GT

I guess there is a first time for everything. That's why we originally thought bad gaskets or o-rings. We figured that since it had the PI intake, it wouldn't be cracked. Boy were we surprised. Well...sort of surprised. Guess I should put aside a fund for a real intake in case this happens again. I wont be putting on another plastic POS.

MU71L4710N

mine cracked in the same place. came to me cracked (bought the car in texas, my parents inspected it and saw nothing but by the time i got it i found it was pissing antifreeze out of there, they had cleaned the engine bay so it wasnt visible till it had been driven alot) and the car had 47k miles on it. same spot as yours and ive seen a few other ppl with the same damn problem.

5spd GT

An aluminum crossover/plastic intake CAN still crack.

The chances are much less though...