I know what your saying about shops and dealers, but the Ford dealer in my town doesn't even have the Rotunda tool, and this shop has it, along with another shop in the next town, and they have done several of these, and a Ford dealer in that town told me to call him, b/c he has done more than them.

I'm just hoping I don't get screwed!

 

I was told the same thing. Weve done several and have had no problems. In the end they had pricing available for head removal, replacement and who knows, a new long block could be an option.
Just stay super cautious and try to be present and available, you might now know as much as they do.

 

promises,promises,for the money dealer will charge you I would take week off my job and do it my self even if it means removing the head.
have bad feeling about dealer in your particular case b/c they know you're f.....
and you have no choice cose you showed up there.
Don't be scared doing it your self ,tow truck is allways available on the other side of phone line when needed.

 

Hey MBB, I realize from previous posts that you bought your truck with 60,000 miles on it, so you probably have no idea how the previous owner drove it. However, I remember in another post concerning fuel economy that you were driving your F150 pretty easy to get decent mileage. I wonder if driving the truck easy leads to excessive carbon buildup around the plugs? Just wondering what may have caused your excessive plug sticking problem . . .

Here's wishing you the best of luck on getting your truck back on the road with minimal cost.

Dale

 

My opinion is that its not driving habits, its a sh#@%&y design. We should probably just realize that and know that argument can be made for both sides of the coin for a heavy foot or a light foot or Chevron or Arco or whatever other gas there is. I use my truck. I take care of my truck, I drive light when it's appropriate, I drive fast if its appropriate, I use 4 wheel drive regularly, I maintain my vehicle every 3k miles, I use super unleaded everytime. I'm sure there will be exceptions to all the scenarios listed above and everyone out there will have a differing outcome. Regardless, there won't be many that just goes out to their garage or driveway and throws a sparkplug socket on a ratchet and removes the plugs and then throws 8 new ones back in.

 

MBB I too broke a plug and was trying to advise you on extraction .. We should help others by showing what we might have done wrong to cause our headache. I can get us started here with what I know by now.

My first mistake was using incorrect penetrant. I used pb blaster (no good for this application it wont touch the carbon/varnish build up) only use Aero Kroil.

I dont know what penetrant you were using cant remember. I think you erred when you used an inferior tap (IRWIN) remember i told you i used a BLUE POINT tap i think this extremely important I doubt you would have broke a blue point or snap on or mac tap.

maybe others can learn from our mistakes. therefore not a total loss .

MBB if you get that broke tap out dont give up get you a really really good tap and go back at it.. I have had my blue points in some tough stuff already like stainless and grade 5 metals and never broke one yet .. best of luck to all

 

Nice post, thanks!

 

I called my local dealer and they quoted me $189 to do the plugs. If the plugs break he said it would run about an additional hour of labor per broke plug at $105/hr. I dont know whether to bring it somewhere or try it myself. The problem I have with someone else doing the work is that they wouldnt take as much care with my truck and not care if plugs broke...they dont have to pay to fix it. I would like to attempt them myself but these threads worry me.

 

I feel the same way. My dealer quoted almost $400 but said that if they break one, it's their problem. That was a couple of months ago. One thing I don't understand, how can your dealer do it for that price when they normally charge $17 for each plug, or about $136 for a set. Plus my dealer says they change the boots.

 

I believe we all agree that the design of the 5.4L heads/sparkplugs is marginal. However, it appears that some engines experience a real problem during plug change while some others don't have a problem at all. Therefore, logic would suggest that something different is occuring, but we're not sure what it is. I believe it would make some sense to try and figure out what is different from one truck/driver/operating/service parameter to the next to see if we can determine a correlation, and therefore make an educated assessment as to whether we can minimize the effect of this marginal design. Ford's TSB is a good start, but I'm hopeful that we, or Ford, can find a better fix/procedure before it's time to do my plugs.

Dale

 

Dale, Agreed. Good point, that's probably why I read about this everyday. I will probably be thinking about changing plugs again and would like all the knowledge possible.

 

The one thing I have noticed is the time for the penetrating fluid to soak in, some guys let it soak for 10 minutes others 3 hours and also over night, what I'm wondering is how warm is the engine when they finally try to unscrew the plugs, I would guess that some engines are cold by now and that could be part of the problem.....

The TSB says to remove sparkplugs while the engine is warm, I would interpet that the engine temp should be around 100 to 140 degrees.... Right???


Ulf

 

When I broke my fourth plug drivers side back Indeed I did only warm the engine prior to the procedure and let the penetrant soak about 10 minutes on the first plug a little less on the second plug (engine getting cooler by now) even less probably on the third plug. and broke the fourth plug. You might be on the right track maybe we need full engine warming prior to every plug out. on the other side I warmed the engine again to almost full hot then pulled all four boots and cracked them slightly and sprayed with aero kroil this time let soak 15 full minutes then put all boots on and warmed it again. then did one at a time rewarming as i went they all came out fine. did I overkill?? The prevention is well worth the cure here!!!

 

I called a dealership in Georgia a while back and they admitted to knowing about this deal. However, they have a practice of changing the plugs per the TSB but with the engine HOT. They said they have found that it works a lot better with a hot engine instead of a warm or cold one.

 

Let me share your pain with these damn plugs. I have a 04 FX4 Supercab 4X4 that has a bad plug. #5.. why is #5 the biggest pain? Anyway back to sharing my pain. I have an Edge connected to my truck and that's how I know it the #5 cylinder. I brought my truck to my trusted and truley honest local mechanic. He followed the TSB procedure and still couldn't get that plug to budge. He said he didn't want to go any further with out the Rotunda tool just incase, like I've read here, the plug breaks. I called my local Ford dealer and asked them how much to change the plugs? Minimal of 3 hours labor at $70, if everything goes well. Of course we all know they take their time and soak our wallets. I also asked them if they every heard of this TSB. Basically they thought I was crazy and after giving them the number they finally found it and said we didn't know. The tool... ready to bend over and take it?? Backordered to after the first of the year... guess alot of people need it now. The best part... a list price of $190.00. What the hell?? I'm up in the air about letting one of my local Ford dealerships try... because of the money being soaked out of me with no guarantee that they won't screw up something and either the heads have to be pulled or even worse replaced. Anyone have any ideas??