Hey everyone, just looking for some insight on an issue I ran into today. I have an 03 F250 5.4L

Driving down the highway today, I notice my truck was jerking forward a little, hard to notice almost felt like I was hitting very small pot holes. I revved up a little to see if I could notice any noises and I got a loud pop. after the pop, got a noise like an exhaust leak so I pulled off to the side of the highway and popped the hood (engine still running). Noticed the noise coming from the passenger side most forward spark plug. Then noticed the part that the coil attaches too had broke off from its bracket and was unseated, shut off the engine and pulled it out to find the coil cover had melted to the coil. The spark plug inside was moving freely so I took it out thinking it stripped from the header. Come to find that the plug had actually separated from its threading completely so just the core part of the plug had shot out from the cylinder, the threading and socket attachment portion still fully attached. I installed a new spark plug and new coil harness and coil. Seems to be running as good as new now. Has anyone ever seen or head or this before? Is there more to this than a simple blown plug that I need to worry about?

 

Lots of issues with blown plugs. The 2 valve 5.4's and 6.8's use the timeserts or helicoils and the 3 valve engines have two piece plugs the break and requires a special tool to remove. Post some pictures wouldn't mind seeing this.

Welcome To FTE! And check out the 5.4 forum down below.

 

Not sure how to post pictured or else I would :/

 

It appears that you have a special case , it is more like a spark plug failure rather than a blown out spark plug with stripped threads that would normally require an insert (like Timesert ) .

I heard once melting of a spark plug electrode , if I am not mistaken , it was an exotic Bosch plug ( may be triple electrodes ? ). Are your plugs OEM Motocraft ?
Some members reported some types of failures with non OEM plugs . That is why Motocraft plugs are recommended .

You did not mention how many miles on the engine and if the spark plugs ever been replaced before ( and what brand of plugs ).

You can go to blownsparkplug.com and purchase a special "emergency plug" that will go on the blown spark plug hole to suppress the terrible sound . You also need to unplug that injector's wiring to stop raw fuel going into your catalytic converter. This is an emergency application that will give you some extra time to get to a repair shop or possibly home .

 

Sorry forgot that part, like I said 5.4L with 106,000 miles on it. I replaced the spark plugs about 2 1/2 to 3 years ago with Pulstar Eco-MPG series spark plugs that I found on autoanything.com. I probably put 20k-25k miles on them if that.

 

We have two facts now . 1- You are not using OEM Motocraft plugs
( I will be very concerned about plugs -anything other than Motocraft or Autolite ),
2-You have a strange spark plug failure , possibly with melted electrod .

There are many considerations when you are selecting a spark plug for your application . One of them is called "heat range" which must be matching to your application. I am not going to pretend to be a spark plug expert , but there is a possibility that your spark plug failed and others might too . This could be a concern for me (if I were in your shoes ) . I would like you to consider of replacing all your plugs with OEM Motocraft (they are cheep enough and trouble free ) .

Remember to blow the plug holes with compressed air before removing the plug , use a bit of anti-sieze on threads and dielectric grease on boot& plug interface (against moisture) . A torque wrench is recommended ( Ford recommended torque is 14 Lb-ft, you may hear numerous arguments about it ) . Think about it .

Good luck,

 

Thanks for the advice, seems like a sound idea and I will give it a try and repost on here if the issue happens again. Thank you again

 

I have a 2001 V10 Triton E450 which blew the #3 plug while just idling or slowly moving. The Ford dealer is going to use a helicoil to repair it and replace all the plugs and torque them to the proper torque amount. I have two questions:
1. Is there one certain cylinder that is more likely to blow?
2. Would you advise boring out and using the inserts in all the rest of the cylinders, or do you think that there is little likelihood of this happening again?
Mine is a Motorhome, and I go into remote areas, and I want to have peace of mind and not worry! What are your thoughts?
Thanks

 

A Ford dealer should know better than to use a "helicoil". Tell them to use the Ford-recommended part and procedure for installing a permanent insert into the head. Simple helicoils are highly prone to repeat failures.

1. No.
2. Your choice. The observation among many here is that if the plugs are torqued to around 2X the "specification", that cures the problem of future blowouts (25-28 lb-ft instead of 13-14 lb-ft). A dealer is unlikely to be too keen on this idea, though.

 

Yep, believe it or not SOP here tends to be put the plug (or a new plug) back in. If threads aren't damaged and you can torque it to around 25 ft lbs, it will most likely be fine forever.

 

You got very lucky that the threads weren't trashed. You're good to go. Just keep and eye on it and since its the front plug check it again at 1-2k miles by retorquing it.

I've had a similar situation happened to me. 2 yrs ago, I replaced my original plugs and coils on my 02 at 143k miles. Not even 2k miles later, the spark plug on the number 8 cylinder blew out. Luckily I was around the corner from the destination approx 500 ft away and when it happened I knew what that sound is.

I pulled the plug and coil out and got my inspection camera and checked the threads and they were all intact and I was shocked and was asking myself, how is that possible because most of the time the threads are trashed 95% of the time. So I bought a new plug, and threaded it in and it tightened. I was relieved. I put the coil back in and haven't had a problem since. I was thinking maybe when I took all of the plugs out when I was changing them on that side, I tightened all of them and missed that one.

Fast forward to early last yr at the beginning of Covid, at about 12k miles later I checked the torque on all 8 plugs and every single one of them were tight. Still running great to this day and it just turned 165k miles yesterday. That was my experience with it. Besides that problem and crappy exhaust manifolds it is a very reliable engine.

 

I may not be of a big help here but when plugging the plug don't forget to apply dielectric grease on boot & plug interface (against moisture). Lots of things where you can apply Dielectric grease.