I driving home tonight blew a spark plug going up a hill. From this forum it sounds like this is a pretty common problem and will cost a minimum of $600 to repair. BTW my truck has 137,700 miles on it and has been trouble free until now. I gather the problem is an aluminum head and not enough threads to hold the spark plug in after about 125000 miles. My question is this. Is it always necessary to install a heli-coil to rethread the spark plug hole in the head? I think I can feel some thread left in the spark plug hole. Has anyone fixed the problem by just screwing in a new sparkplug?

 

If you would do enough research on the issue you would find that no you can't do what your thinking about and not with a Helicoil.
The correct repair is use of a TIME SERT kit.
This is the repair Ford uses..
Good luck.

 

As Bluegrass stated above research is definitely in order!!!

By far I prefer timersert Co. I use both on the job at least once or so a week. Just to give you an idea the kit I snapped a pic of below was about $85.

The yellow recoil kit is up to par with timesert but I prefer timesert. The yellow kit was around $400.

I've delt face to face with one of the owners at timesert and he would bend over backwards to help a guy out!!




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If the threads are still there, try to install a new plug. Be sure to torque if to 28 ft lbs, use a Motorcraft plug with no antisieze.

 

We have a member named Galaxy that rents out a Timesert kit. Send him a private message.

Ford doesn't use Timesert, they use Lock N Stitch, it's also good.

 

Timesert was Ford's first go to, a couple of years back they switched to Lock N Stitch, no clue as to why they made the change, both are good systems.