I was kind of amazed upon a visual inspection of my 5.4 V8 Lariat engine. The first apparent thing is there is no visual sign of spark plugs or spark plug wires. I have been told that the wires are a thing of the past and that the plugs are hidden behind a plate and are all in a row and are connected by a boot directly to the coil. Can some experts ellaborate on this and if what I have heard is true, are the plugs hard to get to and where are they located?

 

There are a lot of posts on this subject, too bad the search doesn't work lately.

There is an individual tiny coil on top of each spark plug which is in a hole and all the spark plugs are accessed from the top of the block unlike previous V-8's down by the exhaust manifolds. They are real hard to get at and the 5.4 with coil packs is way worse of a pain to change than the 4.6 which has two distributor type coil packs (one for each bank at the front of the motor) and coil wires.

Ford builds these engines, puts in the plugs & wires and they shoehorn it into the vehicles without thinking about maintenance ease.

Body lift is an idea to make it easier cause you can barely get your hands in there on the rear cylinders.