MitchF150 - "Lots of swear words, lots of scratches on the hands"

EXACTLY! I've never seen a set up like this! What a pain to get at some of the spark plugs, however, I was able to after a couple of hours. My plugs did not need to be changed, however, after reading about blown plugs (epsecially the passenger side rear plug - #8) I wanted to inspect mine. All were just fine.

 

I changed the plugs on my wife's 99 5.4L for the first time in September. Not a pleasent experience, but I would do it again. It took about 4 hours including two trips to the store and some breaks. I figure I could do it again in under 2 hours next time, and keep improving. Neal has done it in 37 minutes IIRC.

 

I just changed all 8 plugs on my '99 5.4L @ 50,000 miles (had a coil go bad, so figured I'd change all the plugs while I was in there). It was my first time changing the plugs on this truck - a pain in the a** for sure - More than my hands, my KNEES are killing me from kneeling up on top of my truck to get at the plugs. Word of advice - you can get to all the plugs & Coil bolts without removing the fuel rails, etc. You might have to unplug an extra electrical connection here and there to make life easier, but other than that, the only peripheral part that I had to remove was the bracket holding the power steering reservior (just 3 bolts). Had to make good use of a variety of socket extensions though. Getting at the coil screws is the hardest part - focus, focus, focus - don't drop one of those little bolts. The fuel rails on mine seemed to be perfectly positioned to allow an extension to slide down into the plug hole at just the right angle. Make sure to BLOW OUT THE DIRT before removing plugs. Tons of sand and dirt in there on mine. Took me 2.5 hours total.

QUESTION: Based on some of your posts, I am a little nervous now, since I think I may have tightened my plugs down a little too hard (didn't have the torque spec, so just made them TIGHT). How do you know if you tightened TOO hard (I never felt anything strip or 'pop', so does that mean I am OK)? (I did use a very small amount of anti-sieze).