There is a soft rubber weather strip that goes full length under the back of the hood and it sits on a plastic ridge that is in two pieces so it has a gap in the middle. Pull the rubber strip off, make a little bridge to close that gap and glue it in, add sealer around that area. Buy new plug boots, get some very heavy grease and apply it around the boot tops before installing........done!
This picture shows the fix 2 years after it was done and the bridge is hidden under the rubber strip.

 

thanks man! this will deff help me out!

 

Deserves a bump.

 

agreed

 

Thanks, the water goes under the soft full length rubber piece and drips down onto the engine and settles mostly in the rear plug holes on the drivers side. I discovered it out of frustration and ran a hose behind the rubber strip with a newspaper sitting on the rear of the engine. I knew it had to be coming in from somewhere.
That was 2 years ago and haven't had the problem since. I also added heavy grease to all the tops of my boots when I put the new ones in. They might soften over a period of time but it will be time for new boots again by then anyway. Boots are important on these engines because they can easily leak juice into the heads.

 

In addition to the heavy grease, I added a o ring between the sealing groves to make the boot fit tighter in the hole.

 

A generic O-ring.......that's really cool!

 

Very good idea! I'm at 90k miles now so plugs and boots are in my near future plans, this just made the list too.

 

This is an issue I had from the get go. Water in the plugs caused me to have serious electrical issues. At first i wasn't sure how water was getting in the housing till someone here told me to run this test and it worked. last summers rains brought down more water than usual. The seals around my windshield were bad. Misfires? plenty. Plugs and coils? Many. I went as far as thinking the manifold had a leak, which i ended up cracking anyways trying to find the problem. I'll let the pictures tell the story. Everything is fine now but boy did i have a hard time with this issue last year. Glad you put this thread out.

 

Dude. Somebody ran over the end of your hose!

Really though nice work!

 

Great pics Jay!

 

Bump

Reminder for me to address this this week

 

That full length soft rubber piece looks like it is keeping the water out but it is just going underneath it (at the middle).

 

I need to do this on my Ex and my 2002 F350! I did the coil packs and boots on my F350's 5.4, but did not do the plugs at that time... Need to go back and do the plugs, and fix the leak issue all at the same time!

Thanks!!!

Garry

 

Wait a minute?! Trucks don't have spark plugs! (just ribbin' y'all)