Master certified? Not me, far from it in fact. I am however a proud student of the School of Hard Knocks, and know what I know mostly from getting my *** beat a lot in the field. :o

 

I have a 2000 F-150 Factory Ford Shop Manual. It says to torque the 5.4, 4.6 and the 4.2 (six cylinder) spark plugs to 11 ft.pounds. It says nothing about using anti seize coumpound. I bought a Sears 3/8 torque wrench and a Snap-On 6 inch plug socket to check the torque on the plugs. I am going to do this every thirty thousand miles. I have done this once as I only 44,000 miles on the truck. All were tight at 30,000 miles. It does say to use Dielectric Compound meeting ESE-M1C171-A or equivalent on the inside of the coil boots

 

I got them all done and all torqued down to 14 ft-lbs even 7&8 too.

FYI it did take about 20 ft-lbs to loosen the plugs and when I torqued them down to 14 ft-lbs the wrench only travel about 1/8 of a turn. 7&8 are alittle tough so off pop the fuel rail and it was apiece of cake.

I think I spent more time blowing out sand and dirt out of the holes, intake area and cleaning the coils and boots then actually r/r the plugs.

Only thing left to do is replace the air filter and I'll be good for another 100K miles.

 

Good job, Jake

I could never get a torque wrench to reliably read on the back plugs... man you're good!

Here's another perspective:

If you follow that logic a bit... Denso also says 1/16 turn, so say that's approx 7 ft-lb. 1/8 turn would be 14, and 1/4 turn would then be approx 28, which is waaay too much and is the root cause of launching in the first place. So anyone who says 1/4 turn on a tapered seat 14mm plug in aluminum heads is just out to lunch.

I'm still gonna keep using a bit 'o anti-stick - just makes me feel better

Cheers
Bubba