Engine Sputtering. Need Help!!!
Alright so i bought a 97 f150 about a couple days ago and its been driving flawlessly and today i took it into work to detail the truck and wash the engine bay. As i was driving home the engine started sputtering and the engine light went on. The engine seemed liked it had half its power... At idle its sputtering and when accelerating at any speed it does also. I checked all coil packs and injector fitting and all seem to be tight and good. Looked at all electrical plugs and seem to be all connected. I then disconnected the terminal off the battery and then put it back on and started the truck and the engine light went off but the truck is still sputtering.. Any suggestions? Maybe water in some of the electrical connections?

Engine is 5.4 V8

 

Washing the engine and engine bay is probably going to get water into the plug wells...this is not a good thing.

Start by....you'll need to remove all the COP's (Coil On Plug) or spark plug wires, (depending on which your truck is equipt with) used some compressed air and dry these areas out. You may have cracked the porcelain on a plug or two as well...so you might need change them as well.

be sure to use dielectric compound/grease on the connections to help seal out moisture for future events

 

x2


If your lucky you can pull the COP's (or coil packs, whichever you have) and dry them out but there's a good chance if they are old, they will fail again shortly.... so, it's time for new ones.
I would say just buy a whole new set, around $100 dollars shipped from ebay sellers like Global supplies or Uneek.

 

BIG mistake with a COP-equipped vehicle, which yours is.

You should have read the codes before disconnecting the battery.

 

Better get your rocker arms checked had kind of a similar situation and turns out two of my rocker arms exploded inside and left me with half the power. Here I thought it was just a plugs or COP's. Nope opened up and pieces were everywhere. Scraped up everything inside and now pieces are probably in opposite head. 2004 F150 5.4 with only 70K miles and the engine is done. Dropping a new reman in tomrw, thank god for days in the military or else I would be paying out the *** to get this put in.

 

Dont worry about anything but the water. Its very unusual for valve train damage so ignore that last post. Dry it out pull all the coils all 5.4 engine are coil on plug not coil pack. Now would be a good time for a plug change and a new set of coils. Likely at least 1 is fried at any rate from washing it. you can get coils pretty cheap on e-bay

 

Thanks for your input guys. Gonna get new coil packs and spark plugs and hopefully that solves my issue

 

Use only Motorcraft spark plugs, do NOT use antiseize, and torque them to 28 ft/lb.

Cops: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/IGNIT...item588f285bd7

Get the 10 pack so you have a couple spares.

 

how do i test a coil pack to see if its bad? Take the coil pack out with the spark plug and tap to the block and crank the engine to see if it sparks?

 

The only way YOU can test it without some expensive test equipment is swap it with a known good COP.

You have COP, not coil pack. There's a difference.