changed oil, changed plugs, and all new coils. now this 99 f150 5.4 with 112,000 miles is ticking. im now questioning my tightening on spark plugs. or does it sound oil related?

 

Better check those plugs, did they all go in ok or seem too? Any certain one your not sure about - No. 4 maybe , that's a Btch? I'm sure you already thought about that..Did you use the rubber hose method , I always used that and it's worked great for 200,000 miles. So did this just start or was the ticking there before ? Prolly stupid questions , but answereing may help figure it out.

 

didnt do the #4. I couldnt get it loose, so i figured i would wait until i had more patience, cause i knew getting it back in would be tough. It just started happening, and it doesnt really sound like lifters. The thing does seem more peppy with the new coils

 

I had the same problem with my 99 f150 5.4 liter. I had it tuned up @ 105k miles; I've got almost 121k miles now; not too much time after the tune up I started noticing a tick on the passenger side head and some loss of power. I had it looked at and was told it was probably an internal problem.About two months ago I went on vacation in it,got in it to come back home and went to crank it up and suddenly heard a loud sound, like the head gasket might of blown out, come to find out it had blown a spark plug out of the head.The garage that towed it in and repaired it said that the spark plug must have workrd its way out over time until eventually blowing out,luckily the garage said there was no thread damage. The plug that blew out was the one closest to the firewall on the passenger side, I'm not sure of the plug# right off the top of my head.Apparentely this has been a problem on the f150s in the late 90's and early 2000's.I would really like to know the cause of this problem, if you find out let me know. Thanks.

Danny
Greenville, SC

 

the cause... some smart azz over at ford said hey we have aluminum heads, which are light, but if we take the standard 8 threads and reduce them to 4 we MUST be saving weight and wear on the robots that tap them.... but over time customers noticed this causes easy stretching of threads, blown out plugs (threads shot) and backing out plugs. ford of course says this is in no way their fault...... ya sure .. like me were the ones that got to chose to have a blow out plug due to design or not..... ha.

 

i know its an old thread but im new to this site and dont know how to post a new one. i replaced the coils and plugs in my 99 f150 5.4 triton now it has what sounds to be a knock/ tick comming from around the number 4 area. reason for changing them is it started missing and stumbling when i hit the gas. had no knock before the change. now it does along with worse idle then before. serious need of help.

 

Did you torque them to 28ft/lbs? If not you might be having the plugs come loose and soon they will get spit and you'll have to get a timesert done.

For the idle issue what brand plugs and COPs you use?