Mark another one on the wall for a sparkplug broke off in a head
 

Putting in my autolite HT0's getting ready for my dyno tune tomorrow. They all creaked, popped, and groaned untill I got the the last/easist one to get to(driver side front). No creaking, no groaning... broke off in the head :(

I'll post pictures tomorrow.

man i heard horror stories on 5.4 and that... whats the deal?!?! kinda glad I went with the 4.6... if i had a sporty truck I woulda went 5.4 blown too!

Sorry about your bad luck (or the bad design). :( Did the others look scored? Did you use a little penetrating oil? I heard that Ford is working on a "tool" to remove the rest of the plug without pulling the head. Are you pulling the head or Ford?

Yeah I used penetrating oil. That did no good. The others were all rusted up etc.

I'm going to pull the heads myself. Im going to call http://jmschip.com/ and see if they can do the conversion on my heads. I hope I can round up enough money so at the same time I can go ahead and do a built shortblock.

DAMN, sorry to hear about the plug. How much mileage did you have when you changed them?? Should they be changed sooner to prevent them from rusting in there? Hope you get your baby running again. :)

Sorry to hear that :(

Where you turning it the right way :devil:

Goodluck FatherFord :beers:

Someone told me that a lot of penetrating oil and an easy-out can get the insert out. Shouldn't be too hard to finagle out since it's up front.

ETA - I've also been told that if you can get the insert to loosen up a bit, you might be able to make it blow out by cranking the engine.

That blows man. How many miles on your truck? By the way, I LOVE your screen name :>

There were 36k miles on the truck.

Just tried the two methods mentioned above. No work. That guy is in there.

http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/7901/img13023wh.jpg

Wonderful, so had anyone ever taken their truck to the dealer to have the plugs replaced and have them break off?? I wonder if the dealer will pay?? This is an effing nightmare for do-it-yourselfers, just think, changing your own spark plugs just became a real headache.

There have been stories posted here about dealers breaking them too. Some dealers covered it, others didn't. Looks like a crap shoot. I'll be changing mine out early, before 30k.

Thats it. Unless something drastic happens that a plug is dead, I think I'll leave em in there for as long as I own this truck. It'll be gone at 120000km which should be about a year from now. :(

If you don't pull 'em you sure won't break 'em. But good luck to the poor slob who does try to get them out of your truck after you turn loose of it. :rolleyes:

Thats the sad part, and reason why I think private sales will really drop, as will resale values.

Just imagine, your some poor schmuck who buys a fairly low mileage F150 and decided to perform a routine tune up on the thing like a typical do it yourselfer. Now lets for a second forget about the new generation of pansies who believe that routine maintenance should only be performed at 100k miles or over. Anyway, so this schmuck pulls the plugs and gets himself into a helluva lot more than he bargained for. Oh well, guess the days of good ole reliable pickups gone?? I miss the simplicity of my 93 F150. :mad:

For your info, I do all my own maintenane regularly on all my vehicles and toys very diligently since I was sixteen. But if doing a routine thing like changing spark plugs is gonna end up costing me thousands when it breaks off in the head, then I think I'm gonna pass on changing plugs and hand my truck back to Ford when the lease is up.