Hi Guys, New to the forum, and new to ford ownership. I picked up my 04 F150 FX4 last month, and have been happy with it so far. I have been doing maintenance each week, bit by bit as time and funds allow, following all of the great instructions on here. Long story short, I finally grew some coconuts large enough to take on the spark plugs this past weekend. My truck has 141k on the odometer.


I started on the driver side, disconnected the battery, pulled the PCM, and started from cylinder 1 going back, got those replaced, but did notice oil on the plug boot, and plug itself. I did blow out each plug hole with compressor prior to pulling the plugs. Put everything back together, and started it back up, and everything seemed fine. So started on the driver side 5-8, and once done, got it back together, started her up, and bam rough idle, and started throwing codes, P0351, and P0113. Searched the forums, found that was supposed to be cylinder 1, so I switched out the coil packs with another coil, and reset the codes, and nothing, still got the same code.
So I started pulling the coils (did replace with new ones, MSD, got a good deal on them from summit at the time for the set, and am using Motorcraft plugs. Antisieze was applied, as well as dielectric grease).so swapped a few coils around, and had no luck. Finally decided to pull all the new plugs out on the driver side, and replace with the old ones, but still using the new coils. Fired it up, the Code now is on cylinder number 2 as P0352. So I pulled that coil and plug out, and when I pulled the plug out, I noticed the tip was burnt. Any reason why this could be? Was it because of the leftover oil in the chamber? I have yet to pull any other plugs out since I am at work.

This is a brand new plug that I had put in, and as you can see how burnt up the tip is. I didn't fiddle with anything else, didn't mess with fuel injectors. I did run a fuel injector cleaner (Lucas) in previous gas fillup. Reminder, truck was running fine before this.
Have searched the forums on all of the different scenarios, and the solutions have been mixed. I plan on going home today, and switching all the plugs, and coils back to the original set I had on there originally, and starting from scratch one by one. But did not think it would be this much trouble for a plug/coil change.

Any advise would be appreciated.

 

So bit of an update, removed the MSD Coils that I bought, turns out they were actually a tad short, as soon as I removed those, and put the stock ones back in, the misfire codes cleared, and never came back. Engine still currently runs rough, will be pulling the rest of the new plugs out, and putting the old ones back in to test, but right now I do have a vacuum leak code, P0174 and P0171.

 

Just another reason not to recommend MSD coils.

 

Agreed, I read some good and bad on both, but didn't expect that bad, especially from a name brand, but I am very new to the domestic truck scene, so its been a learning experience on all of the maintenance stuff, even though its just nuts and bolts.

 

I'd stick with Motorcraft or Delphi.

 

Update* So after a week of not being able to drive my truck due to the misfire, I continued to use the time to scour the forums for a solution. While doing this, I had ordered another set of plugs from Amazon for back up. During the order, I noticed that the description said SP-515 superceded by SP-546. Which seemed odd, as I thought this whole time SP-515 was the latest and greatest. So when I received my order, I noticed I got the SP-515, which of course was the set I just put in my truck. So I quickly searched the forums, and found a post stating that the SP-515s were indeed replaced by SP-546, as the SP-515 were prone to out of box failures.

So I sent the SP-515 back to Amazon for a refund, and ran down to my local O'reilly's, and picked up a set of SP-546, and low and behold, after installing them this morning, I said a quick prayer, haha, and turned the truck on, and oila, no misfires, ran smooth as butter, and like a new truck all together. My slight ticking that I had also went away.

So if any one has any issues after installing the SP-515's, and didn't have issues prior, this may be a possible cause as you now may have faulty plugs. So make sure you get the SP-546.

 

Congratulations on finding the problem and thanks for letting us know!