My car is an 02 with 29K miles and has been very well maintained. I was looking underneath the car and noticed that all the exhaust manifold bolts and also most of the other nuts or bolts underneath the car in the engine area are corroded or rusted. WTF? It blows me away that Porsche does not use stainless hardware on a car costing in excess of $130K. I've done some research online and it seems that this is fairly normal. Has anyone changed out any of the hardware like the 18 exhaust manifold bolts as part of the preventative maintenance? I've also read about the various horror stories with the rusty bolts snapping during removal and thus opening up a whole can of worms. It seems to me that it would be better to be proactive and replace the rusty hardware before it gets really bad. Has anyone tried to remove the exhaust manifold bolts for example? My understanding is that they are torqued to only 24 ft/lb so they should not be too hard to remove and replace. Any help would be appreciated.........Also, does anyone use any kind of corrosion coatings under the engine to keep all the nuts and bolts from rusting?

 

There's a reason why nobody makes more per car than Porsche

 

When I removed the exhaust manifold bolts it was not that hard at all. My car had 5x,xxx miles but it has been a CA car all its life so no salt, snow, etc. With that said, the nuts that attach to studs which hold the turbos on the other end of the manifolds were not fun at all to remove. One snapped and another needed a torch to come off.