I was reading on Pickuptruck.com and one member stated that he heard running a superchip on a 5.4l greatly increases chances of launching a plug? Is there any truth to this or are these just rumors like most are?

 

A plug launching out of the cylinder head of a Ford Modular motor is *NOT* caused by anyone's chip, or by anyone's intake kit, or pulleys, headers, throttle bodies, or any other performance part, either. It's caused by improper spark plug installation, plain and simple.

Funny how there are exactly *none* of our customers who have had us modify their Lightnings for 11-second 1/4 mile performance levels and quicker that have ever had this happen. Not one. Every single one of them is running a Superchip and *many* other performance modifications as well, yet not one of them has ever launched a plug. I've got an 11-second Lightning myself that's never launched a spark plug. It's got 15K miles on it and has had numerous different sets of spark plugs in it, not one of which has ever had any such issue. And none of any of our other F-150's here with modular motors in them has ever launched a spark plug, either. Why? Because they were *installed* properly!

Ford has increased the number of threads in the newer 5.4 modular cylinder heads for 2003, and that's an OK idea, but we're not going to upgrade to those even on our 11 second Lightning or even heli-coil any of our existing 5.4's cylinder heads, because we don't need to, we install our spark plugs *properly*. So we don't launch spark plugs, and neither do any of our customers who follow our advice on how to install their spark plugs.

In short, this entire claim is utter hogwash.

 

Thanks mike, thats all I needed to hear. I figured that was a B.S claim. So the 03's have more threads for sparkplugs? On all 5.4l's or just the L/HD150s?

 

It's not caused by improper spark plug installation, it is caused by faulty design. There are people with brand new trucks that have never had the plugs replaced being spit out.