That is how mine was too. Ford can run a scan on it that is much better than any you can buy and tell you exactly which coil is bad, but it costs about $90. I just bought a $65 coil and changed it one at a time and drove it down the road and back until I found the bad one.

 

I am not familiar with the van set up but on the trucks I know the coils that fail most often are the two on the pass side rear. The coolant likes to drip on the coils at this point due to the coolant hoses. water also collects in that area. even though the coil boots are rubber and have a sort of seal along top I have pulled out many of these coils and found coolant residue in the opeing. and on the top of the coils.


other than that issue the most common failue is the coil boot itself. most people just replace the entire coil and boot as assembly but the boots are available seperatly. Inside the boot is a connection to the spark plug and a resistor of sorts. when this goes bad it caused the coil to work harder and can cause a misfire.


I do believe the ford factory coils are probably the best available over the carquest, napa, part store ones and most only require a coil boot to fix them.


but back to your truck. if it is misfiring like you say you should have a fault. either a pending fault or a mode6 fault where you can see what cyl is misfiring. Have you thought about buying a mid grade scanner they are like 80 bucks. it will save you a lot of frustration and time in the long run.

 

Motorcraft Plugs are $35

1 Motorcraft coil. $42 shipped.
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item...d=171354173171


8 motorcraft coils. $320
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item...d=181343641505

 

I have the harbor freight $120 obd2 scanner and it doesn't say there's a misfire.
I should just hook a freighted trailer to it and take it up the steepest hill I can find and let it misfire for a while. It's got a full tank of 92 octane so I'm quite sure it's not preignition. It don't feel or sound like it anyway. More than likely it's the plugs, but as I said before, if the coils are out, I would have liked to replace them.
I'll see what I can do to get it to throw a code when the van gets back to the garage.

 

Good luck getting it to throw a code for a bad coil or plug. I had two coils and a plug go out to the point that my truck wouldn't hold 35 mph in 3rd gear. No codes at all and nothing on the obd 2. They just don't throw codes when they go bad. The sun machine the dealer has monitors live data and will give you the exact readout of each coil and plug.

 

The aftermarket coils are not that good. I'd just spend the money and get the oem parts.

 

So I am in Maine for the long weekend, and decided to tackle the spark plug swap myself....
There's 3 feet of snow, it's between 5 and 10 degrees out, and the wind is blowing. I have a 36x60 (18' ceiling) shop that is approximately 20 degrees and full of cold iron.
My 350k btu space heater consumed 10 gallons of k1 at an unreasonable rate.

Anyhow
I bought motorcraft plugs and was going to inspect the coils as I removed them, and swap the ugly ones for a good one from my v10 truck.
Well, I wished I had taken a pic of the plugs... They were horrific. All were built up with a white carbon crap. The coils all looked great. One was aftermarket.

Took me about 3 hours with limited heat. It honestly isn't a bad job.

 

If you're adamant on Motorcraft replacements, start searching online. I've found that one Ford dealer definitely is not the same as another in pricing parts online.
I've purchased factory parts online several times where the online Ford guy was much lower priced than my local Ford store. As someone already mentioned, I've found Ford parts on ebay also for much cheaper than locally.
Here a few to start with:
https://www.parts.com/index.cfm?fuse...Ford-OEM-Parts
Ford Parts Giant - Lowest Prices for Genuine Ford Parts
https://www.parts.com/index.cfm?fuse...Ford-OEM-Parts
http://autonationfordwhitebearlake.com/Parts.aspx

I see that you've already done the job. But the above links might be good for future projects.

 

So for that few times put in Motocraft could and plugs
two cans of sea foam take ur time don’t strong arm them easy back and forth add krill let soak in
have compressed air can or machine to blow s away

23-25 lbs of torque when putting in new ones
keep lisle tool near by a broken plug is not end of world
stripping is the big prob bit after 04 less so
email me if I need to talk through it while doing job

 

what if there are more than one bad coil?