2002 Supercrew 5.4 4x4 Lariat with 115Kmiles

THE SKINNY
Symptom: Truck would vibrate with very little power under any acceleration (light or hard). Barely enough power to get up small-grade inclines. Had to nurse the truck up to 50-55mph before getting to the hills on my curvy country back roads.
Code read P03-02 (Cylinder 2 misfire).
Solution: New boot.

THE NOT-SO-SKINNY
After spending a few hours scouring through this site and others I decided to tackle this myself. Note: the only work I've done on this truck myself has been oil, air-filter and battery changes. I chickened out on the 1st time plug replacement about 1000 miles ago due to hearing about plugs breaking off. Took it to the dealership for that. Service manager warned me about it again, but the actual mechanic told me that was not an issue for my truck year.

I was undecided on what to do for the COP. Motorcraft or Global. I tend to stick with Motorcraft probably more psychological than anything else...but man...the price difference! I decided to go with boot only first. $5.00 Duralast at AutoZone; $10.00 Motorcraft from dealer. Went with Motorcraft.

For those like me with not much experience but eager enough to screw something up, here are a few things that gave me questions:
1. Cylinder Numbering

2. Hardest part for me on this whole job was getting the COP connector off. Even with the COP pulled out, I was unable to turn it enough to see the actual tab and I could not feel it either. Spent 20 minutes fiddling around what I told myself had to be the tab...but wasn't. Finally found a pic on google of the COP showing the tab. Came right off.


3. After pulling the COP and boot completely out, the spring gave me question. Slightly enlongated on the ends and compressed in the middle with something on the inside. I was wondering if this was correct. Found another pic online and was satisfied. Pic of mine.

Next I blew around plug hole with air gun. Took a wire brush to the COP spring. Put dielectric grease inside both ends of the new boot, slipped it on and put more on the outside at both ends.
Put everything back. Ran great!
Note: I could not see anything physically wrong with the old boot except being dirty and with slight rust color on it. There was one tiny section where some of the rubber was "snipped" out but not clean through.

Regarding the COP, if determined just the one COP was bad, I was going to go ahead and get the Motorcraft ($60 from dealer). If I ended up needing another after the Motorcraft, I was going to go ahead and get the Global set and replace all. But I didn't have to go there. The boot was apparently it.

Tremendous help from this site.
Thanks to everyone on this site for being willing to share your experiences...sometimes over and over again on the same issue. Great having all the slight variations of input.

For those asking questions, please...please come back with your final resolution. Disturbing how many threads I came across left "open" after receiving great input.

For anyone that has hung in there this far...question:
I saw many posts on isolating the COP by pulling the connector out while engine was running and see if the engine changed it's tune any. Can someone explain this one again and confirm no issues with getting a zap while doing this?

Thanks again everyone.

 

You don't pull the actual COP while it is running, just unplug the connector-no zap.

Congratulations and thanks for posting the "fix".

 

Just FYI and incase someone else gets confused, the breaking plug problem is with the 5.4 3V, 2004 to early 2008. Your 5.4 2V does not have that problem.