what about running a little bit of ATF or Seafoam it before plug change? or change them while engine is hot?

 

why cant ford get with it on the spark plug thing....why in the world is it 2 parts?? thats about the dumbest thing ive seen since TBI

reading these storys makes me love my 97 4.6L all the thread i need no dumb COP i can do my plugs in about 30 mins..ill take wires and coil packs every day over COP.

hey camarothatcould you could have gotten a few more batto's in that time as well

 

Shifty, they have corrected the issue with the new head design. It only took them 4 years to fix it.

 

well in that 4 years alot of peoples trucks have cost them alot of money to fix spark plugs... i dont understand why they would try to cut a coner there...with spark plugs how bout something that doesnt effect the motor? like a smaller head light or smaller rims to cut cost...if thats what they were trying to do but not the motor thats just asking for bad news.

 

Why are you assuming that they were cutting corners? It was a new design, and I think they just didn't test it thoroughly enough. In theory, it works very well. They just didn't try to run the thing long enough under real world conditions to cause it to carbon up like that before approving it for production. I would be willing to make a BET that when the field reports started showing this issue, they immediately started on a head redesign and brought it out as soon as they were satisfied it not only took care of this issue, but it didn't have any NEW issues and did not cause any problems with EPA certs and CAFE numbers. Why no recall? Pure business decision - it's not a safety issue where the NHTSA can get on their case.

Too many of you people here think a Ford is the greatest thing since sliced bread and is the best vehicle on the planet. FAR from it, folks. They screw things up just as much as everyone else. You sit here and unmercifully dog Toyota for tailgates falling off, but try to sweep Ford's ongoing spark plug issues under the rug. I for one would never own a Ford with a Triton, I don't care what size or year. Hovever, I am VERY happy with my little old V-6 except for the CRAPPY clutch hydraulic system design.

ETA: How many years did it take them to cure the plug LAUNCHING issues in the Triton? Seems to me those 4 thread heads were around for about 10 years?

 

thats more time than i would have spent. and i would have alot of body work to fix when i was all done. i have no patience.

 

My brother decided to take the plugs out of his '07 F-150 just for kicks to see how they came out at about 6k mi. and they all came out whole but he said several of them creaked pretty bad. They don't have to be high miles or bad gas- it's just pretty standard for that plug. The only time I have seen that they weren't problematic, even if they don't break, is when the miles are mostly all open road miles- then they don't seem to carbon up or rust. They came out way too easy on the earlier ones , Ford made sure they didn't come out so easy with the 3V.

 

No kidding - from one extreme to the other!

I dunno - I'm old school. I remember the days when you changed spark plugs every 12k miles, and generally they were easy. The heads were iron, the plugs were out in the open, and except for Ford, they used crush gaskets, not tapered seats. This new stuff with the plugs buried halfway into the engine just bothers the hell out of me, even though you can supposedly get 100k out of a set. Another reason I like my V-6, it's about as close as you are going to get to the old school stuff.

 

I thought it was a joke at first. - Kinduh laughed,-surtuh funny.. Well,to me anyway. The majority of the blow-out problem was from damaged chamber threads. That was ruled in the California Courts way back when. Thread chambers were damaged, crossed. Although over torquing wasn't mentioned, -cross threading was. It wasn't Ford, - It was the people (vehicle owners) .

So if this was indeed a joke from the manufacturer, it's a bad one.

I remember when I did the first plug change in the 98. I couldn't find the damn things

I had to purchase me one of them Chiltons books first