tagging this thread for future reference.

 

Back in the day, when the 3.3 and 3.8L engines came out, there was a HUGE rash of broken rocker shaft towers. Many of them wouldn't go 30K without snapping one off. They would break along a fine line, similar to the "cracked" method of rod bearing caps. After doing countless numbers of these in such a short time, we thought we'd experiment. The head that DIDN'T break ever, was on the same side the grounds attached to the engine. We installed redundant grounds on a handful of ones that employees and friends owned on the side that the heads were breaking. They never broke again. Chalked it up to electrolysis, electrical pitting whatever. The ground paths back to chassis were not ample enough to handle the returns. Cylinder head water jackets are often very close to the manifold thread holes.... Coolant would conduct and disperse these in other directions, which of course most of you know is going to be the path of least resistance.

But I'm no engineer,.....

 

interesting you should say that....gen 4 have a ground strap next to the passenger side manifold.

 

Interesting theory about the Long Tube & Shorty headers reducing temps near the bolts.

I'd like to see a test where you start the truck let it warm up to operating temps at idle and measure the temp with a flir thermal camera.

If someone would do that we could then compare it to a stock manifold with the same procedure.

Of course its always possible that those conditions wouldn't generate enough heat to make a measurable difference.

 

its manifold design...chevy had the same problem until they redesigned the manifold which allowed the manifold to expand without shearing the bolts off against the head.

 

I have a 2012 5.7 Hemi. At just over 100K miles it had 4 exhaust manifold bolt failures. It is clear that Dodge Ram has no engineers working for them. Bolt stress in dissimilar metals is 1st year engineering at most. I can live with wear out of brakes, exhaust systems, ball joints and other parts that move or are normal maintenance items. I can't and won't tolerate crappy engineering that results in expensive failures like these manifold bolts.This failure should never happen, period. It turned out that the exhaust headers were also warped and needed replacing. Utterly unacceptable.

This failure is so serious that my first Dodge Ram is also going to be my last. Later this year I'm going to buy either a Ford F150 or a GM Silverado rather than an under or zero engineered crappy Dodge product.

 

It's the manifold design that is the issue. Simply installing shorty headers should solve the problem permanently.

 

Had 5 bolts replaced on my 2012 5.7 hemi by the dealer. Never knew it was an issue till I looked here. Love my truck.... glad I have the million mile warranty after looking here.

 

Well, it's been almost four months and Dodge (I don't really) Care, hasn't said a word about why the manifold bolts keep breaking in the Dodge Hemi engine. Seems she is a worthless mouthpiece for Dodge. Back in the 90's we were screwed by Dodge with plenum problems in the 5.9L Magnum and it seems, since that worked, they will screw us again with the Dodge Hemi engine. Nothing will be fixed as long as we keep buying Dodge Ram trucks.

 

The Plenum was an issue that the dealer fixed for my paps truck for free. Both my 4th gens (150,000 & 85,000) never had a broken manifold bolt. I do have headers myself I installed them as soon as I got the trucks. I think maybe that is the issue but I am certainly not engineer.