I spent much of the afternoon reading most of the 13 page 5.4 plug thread. Here's my particulars:

- It's a 2003 5.4 with 39.5K for mileage
- The door info says it was manufactured in April of 2003 in Windsor
- I don't have any appearant problems or noises.

I know 2003 was a transition year from bad heads to good heads. I'm hoping I have the good ones.

My questions are:

1. I think early on in the the 13 page thread it said the upgraded head p/n's are 2L3z6049BA and 2L3z6049DA. Are/were these good numbers?

2. Where do find the head p/n's? I did a quick looksee and didn't see anything obvious.

3. If the heads turn out to be good, is your general consensus to still do a plug change with 39.5K miles on it? If no, then when?

4. Now that many folks have been changing plugs over the years on these beasts, is there one brand that seems to be holding up better? I've seen Bosch Platinums and OEM Motorcraft mentioned frequently.

5. Any preference for anti-seize? I've seen nickle based mentioned.

6. I saved a couple of "how to" instruction links but they are 2-3 years old. Is there a newer set of instructions out there?

Thanks in advance.

Signed...Crossing Fingers In Maryland

(aka.....John)

 

I wrote this in another thread - hope it helps,

A friend and one family member did there plugs over here last year - late spring/early summer - they did them at the same time . 2004 super-crew and 2005 super-crew. The biggest pain in the a$$ was getting lined up good on #4 so we could get the impact in there - you have to take off quite a few things and push crap out of the way to get a good bead on and use a swivel. Your still at a pretty good angle when you pull the trigger. The impact hammer hit three time and the plug was extracted. We used a cheap battery operated impact - A little RYOBI with a built in flashlight at the end of the gun lol..You can set it really low - But that little sucker will break a lug nut loose at 120 ft lbs. on it's highest setting- pretty handy..

Installing the new plugs - As always, like pre 2004's "the rubber hose method" I think those were torqued at 25 lbs instead of 12 like on the older models.

So where's the problem?!? I'm very curious as to how there getting broke off, what procedure is being preformed? Sloppiness?

 

You don't need to change the plugs untill about 55,000 miles.

 

Mine are under the valve cover lip, towards the the front of the head on the outside - You have to pull the inner fender well to see good..

What? Good?

You have?... Where, here? Mine ran for maybe 5 minutes on Bosch plugs , Lots of bad write-ups on those. MOTORCRAFT Platinums, or NGK are best..

Allways use Anti- Seize - It helps later down the road , but most of all it seals and keeps the plugs tight during expand and contraction..



Dielectric grease is very very important, this needs to be done..

 

Thanks for the reply.

55,000????? Is that regardless of the style of head 4 thread vs 7 (or 9) thread?

 

That has nothing to do with it, yes , regardless..

Your model has 4-5 threads.

After 60,000 , fuel milage and performance most likely will begin to suffer . As plugs age , the plug gap increases.

 

I thought the 03's had the newer heads with more threads for the plugs.

 

Jbrew is partially incorrect. They started the conversion in 03. Some have them, some don't. From what I read on the spark plug thread, FOMOCO wanted to use up the bad heads first. Below is the link that has some good info.

https://www.f150online.com/forums/sh...ht=spark+plugs

 

You have the right to believe anything you want to believe , just report back after you find out for sure , we will see who's correct..

BTW -This statement is absolutely false - " FOMOCO wanted to use up the bad heads first"(find me this record from the manufacturer) You won't because it is a totally untrue statement. FMC never had "Bad" heads. Just people that couldn't do a proper plug change. That link you provided is inaccurate, There was a class action flied in California, It was thrown out of court . That was the consumer negligence suite. They tried to pin Spark Plug Blowout on Ford Motor Company and failed. This was indeed started by an xFord tech that was let go for incompetence.

Plenty of Visteon info on this as well as articles on TCCoA. There was never a "conversion". A design change for 2004 which went into production in 2003 normally, The 2004 truck went thru many changes , but it wasn't because the previous trucks were bad..

You mean to tell me I've had bad heads the last 206,000 miles????

This is all very old news.. You people come and go - time to go..

 

Well, I guess Ford doesn't know how to install plugs either. A medic that I work with was the original owner of a F250 with the 5.4 and at 80000km or 50000M it spit out one of it's original plugs.

 

It just didn't fly out of there at 50,000 miles. What did you do to it ? You guys getting a team together . It won't work , specially with statements like that one..

You prolly didn't take care of your truck or your just making chit up - most likley.

 

You're so funny. Ya, we're all making this up. If you'd bother to read you'd see that it's not my truck, but a friends at work. He's not the mechanical type that would mess with his own truck. Trust me; it was all original. I had 260,000km on my 97 5.4 and it never spit a plug either but that doesn't mean it can't happen.

 

Sounds like your friend gave it a shot.

 

JBrew,

Below are some select posts from some other guys. These are the references regarding whether 03's have good heads or bad heads. Read all the posts. SuperFord called up Ford and posted what he was told. He also lists what he believes are the p/n's for the good heads. It's in his 1/30/03 post. This info is either from Ford Techs (Buzz Lightyear) or Ford themselves (SuperFords call on 1/8/03).

DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING IN WRITING OR A SOURCE THAT CONTRADICTS THIS INFO? If so, please post it so everyone can see it.

Thanks.....John



Posted by Defective, responding to crazynip – 3/16/06

yes, they did fix the problem. Somewhere in '03, they put more threads in the plug holes.



Posted by Rob O2Lightening – 1/8/03

Ford has a new head with threads in them to fix our Lightnings ???

Quote:
Originally posted by Buzz LightYear
After countless Sparkplugs ejecting out of 5.4s, it appears Ford has redesigned the Windsor heads. I work in the service department of a local dealer and we see at least 4- 5 5.4s that have spit plugs out a month. ( At Least 90 % are Lightnings ) Well today another Tech called me to show me that the threads on the head Ford sent to fix a vehicle were threaded all the way thru. I dont know when this change took effect but this head had a casting stamp of Dec 2, 02. It appears to have a total of 10-12 Threads now.

Buzz
To infinity and beyond

Found this over on the NLOC, very interesting.



Posted by SuperFords – 1/8/03

allright folks, I just got off of the phone with ford. here are some facts, but still a little unclear info.

There IS indeed a revised cylinder head for the 5.4L engine.

It was described to me as having 80% more thread area than previous versions.

These heads began being produced on the 12th of November, 2002.

These heads SHOULD be standard equipment on 2003 trucks.

However, there is no guarantee, because just because your truck was built after November of '02, that doesn't mean that your cylinder heads were. Even your engine build date doesn't guarantee that your actual heads were cast after Nov. 12th.

Here is the unclear part that conflicts with the first info presented in this thread.

They say that they don't think that when an earlier model truck that enters a dealership for repairs it will receive these updated heads. They say that even if an '03 truck were to have a problem, there is no guarantee that it would receive these heads in a repair situation.
The reason for this is that all new production heads are specified for new model production. meaning that all of the heads that they can produce are going onto new trucks before they will stock shelves for repair jobs, in addition to that they say that the existing inventory of old heads would have to be used up first.

This doesn't explain how Buzz Light Year over on NLOC saw these heads in his shop though? but apparently, his info is at least mostly correct. THERE IS A NEW HEAD with extra threads! Unfortunately, you MAY NOT be able to get them if you need them

Believe me, my truck will be coming into the shop at lunch to pull a spark plug and see what's going on in there.

I'm a little afraid to look and be dissappointed.

later,
chris

P.S. Ford says that they are not even sure that the spark plug launching problem is due to the heads only having 4 threads.

They also say that tightning and loosening the plugs and tightening them again (recommended about 3 times doing this) will help properly seat the plugs and reduce the chances of a blown plug.


Posted by SuperFord – 1/30/03
I believe that 2L3Z-6049-BA is the correct number for one head and 2L3Z-6049-DA is the correct number for the other head. Actually if I'm not mistaken, they are both the same exact casting, only the cams are bolted on in the opposite directions.

 

Forgot to post source....sorry about that.

https://www.f150online.com/forums/sh...003+spark+plug