ok ok... what years are affected by the blowouts...i meen ive gotta 04 sd with the 5.4 2v heads....from what ive read im safe...but theres nothing i can do to prepare for it ...except maybe lube myself.. =) am i safe..send some good news my way please!!!!

 

Mid 2003, they supposedly added more threads to the heads to prevent this. You should be safe.

 

thank you sir...good news that i wanted to hear!

 

shot one out yesterday.mine is a 02 5.4l.3rd one back on passenger side.thankfully i bought a extra helicoil,took a hour to fix.i made my own tool to tap the head.

 

Have the plugs ever been replaced jiminpa2? Perhaps they weren't properly torqued.

 

yes they where replaced.after the first one was repaired (it was the original plug)the other 7 where removed,inspected,anti-seazed and re-torked to specs.it lasted 10,000 miles.funny how ford redesigned the heads after everyone had problems with this.3 threads on a aluminum head is pretty thin.i think it was 05 -06 that they fixed this,not 03 as previose said

 

well can anybody else chime in on the year they were changed..i know in 05-06 they started using the 3v heads.. but ive read elsewhere that they added more material to the plug areas

 

04 was the first year for the 3V head on the 5.4L. There were more threads added to the 2V heads in mid to late 02.

 

thank you lxman..

 

This is a scary subject.

Is there anything I can do to PREVENT this from happening?

 

Make sure they are torqued properly.

 

Jiminpa2 of course they redesigned the heads same as everything else when there is a problem part of the reason why when a new type of vechile comes out you should wait for after a few years of production for them to work the kinks out.

 

The best way to prevent it is to keep your plugs changed every 60K on an N/A engine and probably every 30K on a blown engine. My understanding is '03+ have 8 thread heads but it wouldn't surprise me if Ford had some leftovers from '02 and early '03s still had 4 thread heads. Also if you hear them start to tick you have a matter of minutes before the plug spits.

 

"Long thread heads" were introduced for 2-valve 4.6/5.4/6.8 in November 2002, at the Windsor engine plant. November 2003 for Romeo 2-valvers.

This is from Ford documentation I got from a reliable source

Interesting thing is my 2001 V10 (manufactured 9/2000) appears to have long-thread heads and never been serviced. Still have to re-check that.