Spent 6 months chasing a phantom misfire on a 2012 F-150, finally fixed it with a $12 part

Turns out it was a cracked vacuum tee behind the intake manifold that only showed up when the engine was hot. Anyone else ever spend way too long hunting down a simple vacuum leak?

3 comments

3 Comments

young.kim1mo ago

Is it really that big of a deal though? I mean, six months is a long time, but a vacuum leak is a vacuum leak. Sounds like you just got unlucky with where it was hiding.

harpery471mo ago

Ask @young.kim how many times theyve chased a vacuum leak that turned out to be something totally random though. Six months is insane even for a stubborn leak, thats not just bad luck thats something weird going on. Were you checking the same spots over and over or did you actually try new methods each time? Ive seen people get tunnel vision with these things and miss the obvious cause right in front of them lol. Sometimes you gotta step back and think about what changed around the same time the issue started. Just saying, luck might not be the whole story here.

ivanross1mo ago

Nah come on, six months chasing a vacuum leak is wild lol. At some point you gotta wonder if its just not a vacuum leak anymore or if you were looking in the wrong places the whole time. Bad luck can only explain so much before it starts sounding like a user error thing to me.