Well... I finally gathered the energy to tackle the job yesterday and just wanted to add my experience to the board. To start off, I would like to thank everyone here that shares information - Yall are saving people a lot of money!!!

My truck is a 2004 FX4 and I have 90,084 miles on the clock. I put off changing the plugs as people seemed to be having some trouble with many less miles that mine so I kept putting it off. I noticed the idle had begun to get a little rough and fuel mileage began to decrease to I decided to get it done. During the warm weather, I haul a 7,000 pound camper around. Even though I am getting ready to order a new super duty, I love this truck and would not feel right selling it without taking care of the plugs.

I followed the TSB and bought the Lisle tool expecting all of them to break. I pulled the COP's and soaked the plugs in B-12 ChemTool - (carb cleaner) which seems to be pretty impressive stuff!

The long and short of it is as follows....

Passenger side - I started at the front and was going to work my way back - the front plug I thought was coming out pretty easy until I realised that only the hex head and threaded section of the plug cam out. I then moved to the back plug on the passenger side, as this was the most difficult to get to...did not want to be tired and angry while attempting the toughest one - it came out without issue, as did the remaining plugs on the passenger side.

Drivers side, #2 and #4 broke but #1 and #3 came out fine.

I attempted to use the Lisle tool on the Drivers side back plug first as it was the most difficult to reach, out of the three that broke. The tool worked as advertised and I was able to pull the shield out of the head without any issues. This held true for the remaining two broken plugs.

I created a "nozzle" for my shop vac out of vacum hose that would fit down into the cylinder, through the spark plug hole. I was able to vacum out any pieces of the plug/dirt/crud that may have fallen into the cylinder -seemed to work well but me being who I am, I used some carb cleaner to wash the cylinder and completely vacum each one out again, I also used some extended swaps to wipe the low side with a VERY light grease film to hopefully pick up anything that was missed by the shop vac. I followed this by blowing each out with compressed air (with an extended "nozzle" that I made out of the same vacum line) and reintalled the new plugs to spec.

It took me around 5 hours to complete the job but that included chasing my kids around, lunch break and a couple of foamy pop's during the clean up.

The test drive really surprised me, the truck was much more responsive and felt a lot stronger.

Just wanted to share my experience with you all. Here are some pics of the truck, plugs and I figured I'd throw my ugly mug in there to prove that I survived the experience!

 

Congrats on the successful change. I did mine yesterday also and had the same problem on one with only the hex threaded part coming off. And the Lisle tool works like a breeze doesn't it.

 

If you sprayed carb cleaner down the holes, you should change your oil.

 

congrats, sucks that some of them broke

 

Good jobs, both of you. Feels good to get that done and especially to be able to say you did it yourself.

 

Nice man!
I'm getting ready to do this my self! Hopefully going to do it this weekend!

 

Oop's, should have included the fact that after a short drive, I changed the oil and also changed the fuel filter.

 

Good job on the change! I'm doing mine tomorrow or Tuesday on my 04' FX4. I just turned 53k...hopefully I won't break any. I got the Lisle tool just in case!

 

Cool!

 

Glad to see that you keep your engnie bay relatively clean So many of the trucks I see on here have engine bays that look like cess pools. Nice job on the plugs.Its not really that bad if you go about it correctly.