I have been hunting the cause of coolant loss on my wife's '05 Freestar for some time. It's not leaking, or going into the crankcase, it seems to be burning it slowly. The amount of moisture in the exhaust would seem to back this up.

I have already replaced the lower intake gaskets and it didn't help, and I think I have eliminated the head gasket by doing a chemical test on the coolant. No exhaust gasses were present. This leads me reluctantly that there may be a micro crack in the lower intake that is allowing coolant to seep in..

Here's my current issue, I sourced one off of ebay that is off of a low-mileage engine, but a couple of the pressed-in steel water nipples are slightly different. I was under the impression that all 04-07 were the same..

Can these be swapped? or at least rotated a bit?

 

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