I'll try to keep this as concise as possible but I feel it will be a bit longer.

I did this work on a 2001 F150 with the 2V 5.4L V8. The truck has 207,000 miles on the odometer. The owner was complaining about hesitation in the higher RPMs when accelerating.

I changed the fuel filter and it made no difference. I opted to do spark plugs and COPs next.

I purchased Motorcraft plugs from my local auto parts store and MSD COPs off of Amazon here:

When working on the driver's side cylinders, 2 of the 4 plugs were standing in oil. I decided to do valve cover gaskets while I was in there.

This guy's 4 part YouTube videos were helpful for that:

As I started on the passenger side cylinders, the second from the front spark plug was stripped. It looked like the previous owner/mechanic stripped the hex to the point thatnone of my sockets would grab it.

Here is a video I made on how I removed it:

The passenger side valve cover is a pain in the butt to get off and back on.

So. The spark plugs and COPs fixed the higher RPM issue, but, now the truck had a 'service engine soon' light along with the 'add oil/coolant/whatever' light.

The truck also had some new symptoms:
-When idling in park, if I blipped the throttle, it would drop 500 RPMs (almost feeling like it was going to stall) and then rev up.
-The temp gauge stayed below 'C' when running.
- If I shut the truck off, and then turned the key back to 'On', the temp gauge would then accurately show engine temp.
-The A/C was blowing warm.

I borrowed a friend's scanner tool and got 2 codes: P0102 (MAF) and P1289 (Cylinder head temperature sensor).

I tried cleaning the MAF sensor, cleared codes and check but still got P0102. A new MAF sensor fixed it.

To get to the CHT sensor, I followed this YouTube video:

This truck had obvious signs of a coolant leak from the passenger side intake gasket, so I opted to change them out. Pulling the intake manifold wasn't too bad following that video. It's time consuming but not too hard. Some people on here have said they could reach the CHT sensor by just pulling the alternator, I could not.

Here is a pic of where my CHT sensor is located:
(I uploaded the pictures as attachments to this post. I can't get them inline in this post very easily as I'm posting this from my phone. I'll try to fix it once I'm back on my computer. One pic is where the sensor is on the driver's side head, another pic of where the wiring comes through under the manifold and the third shows where it connects)

I read that sometimes it's not the sensor but the wiring. My local auto parts store sell the sensor and a wiring harness. I replaced both. This fixed the 'service engine' light along with the 'add coolant/oil' light as well. I had no more codes.

The truck appeared to idle better, there was no drop in RPMs when I blipped the throttle and the A/C was cold again.

Having gone through all of this, I would have preferred to start with pulling the intake manifold first and then doing CHT sensor, plugs, COPs and valve covers then. You have way more room and access to everything.

Hope this helps someone! When I was googling, I found quite a few threads with lacking pics and resolutions. I figured that if I was successful with my repairs, I would post what I did.

 

Only criticism is the MSD cops. They don't have that good a record. You should have used Motorcraft, there are none better.

 

That's unfortunate. I only chose them because they were recommended.

 

Great Job! That was quite a bit of work!