Just replaced my 96 Tbird 4.6 manifold myself. Just a few tips I learned from personal experience.
There are several 4.6 manifold YouTube videos you can watch for various other Ford vehicles in advance, but I did not find one specific to 96-97 Tbirds. Watch them anyway, they are very similar and will help if you want to DIY with the
Dorman replacement manifold. Got mine on
Rockauto.com Jan 2021 for $198 shipped after 5% off coupon My Manifold was replaced under warranty in the early 2000’s by Ford after the original blew in the front crossover. It lasted awhile, but now has cracked at the rear at the heater hose attachment (brass fitting in plastic manifold) & I discovered upon removal the driver side rear corner was also slowly seeping.
1. Handle the plastic emissions tubing when disconnecting things very carefully, it may break in half with the slightest wiggling. Plastic wire clips now 24 years older are very brittle too (I broke one tab off).
2. It’s not necessary to disconnect the fuel supply lines for the injectors, just flip the whole assembly out of the way after removal
Be sure to wipe the lower O rings which are likely now covered in dirt when you pulled them out. I was unsure about reinserting them as I never had dealt with them, but they were very easy to push in after lining them up in the holes.
3.After removing the old manifold, I used brake cleaner & 00 steel wool to clean & smooth the head mating surfaces and air blow all the dirt out after plugging head openings with paper towels.
4. Fill any Ford gasket anchoring holes in the head surface with a dot of RVT to be safe from potential
vacuum leaks. There is a mention of this on the instruction sheet provided, but be sure to avoid etc the areas you know the seals will sit around the holes
5. Make note where studs with nuts were located that things may have been attached to, as the new manifold supplies hex head self tapping screws instead. As some of these holes are not threaded you will need to use the old machine thread bolts and drive in with the socket while applying strong downward pressure to get them to bite and cut their own threads in, or use a tap if you have one. One held a ground wire on the fuel rail ( passenger front corner) & another held the wire harness, and plastic tube (driver rear corner).
6. Be sure to tighten manifold per instruction sequence with a torque wrench.
7. On my 96 I was able to use my stock alternator brackets, although the kit comes with 2 others. It was missing the two plugs in the kit some videos say it comes with but I transferred over my two sensors and I did not need any plugs.
8. The old Ford manifold used a thick fiber gasket between the manifold and throttle body. Nothing in instructions about using one with new manifold & was confusing, but after examination the new manifold has the rubber seal built in and I did not use the old gasket.
9. When mounting throttle body I discovered there was less clearance for the wire harness to fit under the passenger front leg of the throttle body and would not allow it to seat down on the manifold flange, regardless if I had used the old gasket or not. Trying to relocate the harness forward causes the rear two injector wires to not reach. I ended up carefully opening up the wire loom a few inches (cutting carefully with razor cutter) to separate out the two injector wires out to allow them to run under that front leg of the throttle body to reach while still moving the bulky wire harness forward out from under the throttle body. The new manifold has insufficient height clearance for the thick wire bundle to remain in the exact same place were it crosses over the top of the block which added time to the project to overcome this.
Mechanic book says it’s a 3.2 hour job (had quotes $350 & up labor only plus shop supplies to do it. Doing it for first time in my garage with simple hand tools it took about 7 hours total with time spent discovering & overcoming minor issues,
if you do a lot of your own work anyway and are familiar with automotive fasteners , you should be able to do this & save some $$$. Hope this helped!
