Has anyone heard of head bolt not being installed from factory? When I took my valve cover off one of the head bolts was just laying there and the rest were not torqued down much at all. But no work has ever been done to motor

 

You know this because you've owned it since ?

 

My stepfather has owned it since new and I recently acquired it in January he is kind of out there but he said there wasn’t any work done to the motor

the motor has 129000 miles on it

 

I suppose it could happen, maybe it was assembled(partially) late on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend, lol

Engines are assembled at an Engine assembly plant then wrapped and shipped to a vehicle assembly plant

But it seems to have held up for 130k miles

 

I’m I thought it might be sabotaged from ford since mine is a Mazda b2500. I took the head to a machine shop this morning to have my guts swapped into a new head . Also supposed to replace anything not up to par. For 400$ is this a good deal

 

No, not sabotage, Ford workers kept more jobs because the Mazda Trucks were built in the US of A and not in Japan and imported, so.............for sure not sabotagte
And same engine was used in Ranger and B2500, so worker at the engine plant wouldn't know if the engine they were putting together was going into a Ford or Mazda vehicle

If you think its a good deal then it IS a good deal
Labor rates are different from area to area, so costs are different