last August.

It had to be towed to a large Ford dealership (that I won't specifically name) in the greater Salt Lake area. The end result of it was that Ford Motors (not the dealership) covered the cost of a new engine - no cost to us. Woohoo. Actually, it was a new "short block." Meaning the heads, intake & exhaust manifolds and some other parts were taken off the old engine and put on the new engine.

All was well driving it back to WA. A few weeks later the check engine light came on and we started getting codes for misfires on two of the cylinders, even though it seemed to be running totally fine. I called the UT dealership and they said to take it into a local mechanic here in WA that they approved of.

So here is our dilemma. While the local mechanic was checking it all out, he noticed/discovered that 1 of the 10 head bolts that hold the intake manifold in place - was broken off - in the cylinder head. The other nine bolts holding the intake manifold in place were intact. The only place/time where the head of the bolt could have broken off was in the UT dealership when the new short block engine was installed. Meaning that the UT dealership broke the bolt off in the head and decided to do nothing about it. That could have happened either knowingly or unknowingly to the dealership management. It's possible that a mechanic could have done it and decided on his own to not tell the management what he had done. Or - he could have shown management and they told him to leave it that way.

Our local shop tried to remove the broken bolt and replace it. They actually broke their tool trying to get the broken bolt out. This is a shop that has done a lot of work for us — I trust them completely.

Having 1 of the 10 intake manifold bolts broken off isn't likely to cause any malfunction or breakdown, but it just bugs the heck out of me knowing that it was broken off by the dealership in UT and that someone there basically decided to cover-up what they did and then didn't do. They never mentioned the broken bolt to us when we picked it up. There is potential for the broken bolt to cause serious malfunction, but it is highly unlikely.

Now we need to decide if and what we should do about approaching the dealership in UT about the broken bolt. They broke it off, they should fix it. But just one broken bolt, because of where it is on the engine would possibly mean having to remove the engine and possibly replace the cylinder head that the bolt is broken off in. In other words, a major repair. I fear that they'll just try and blow us off and tell us it's not their problem. We haven't approached them about it yet and are still trying to decide if we should. The local repair shop thinks we should.

Thoughts?