Hi guys I need a little advice. I have a 99 f250 lifted 8 inches on 37s. It was hesitating the other day so I thought it was a coil pack or spark plug issue. It turned out it was although they have all been replaced in the last three thousand miles. I found oil in one of the spark plug holes fouling the coil pack. After I cleaned up the spark plug hole and put a new coil pack in it ran fine. I checked two other spark plug holes another one had a small amount of oil and a different one had some radiator fluid in it. It sounds to me like I would need to do valve cover gaskets and head gaskets. What do you guys think? This truck gets driven less than 3,000 miles a year towing some four wheelers, going off road, and taking a boat every once in a while back and forth to the boat ramp. The truck has a hundred and sixty thousand miles on it and otherwise is in great shape. So I guess my question is is it worth just repairing the gaskets or should I put a freshly rebuilt motor in off of ebay? What are your guys suggestions thank you

 

By your description, it sounds like leaky gaskets are the culprit.

 

Yes I agree with u. Just wondering if I should spend how ever much it is to fix them or get a new engine since it has so high miles. How much do u think it should cost to have head and valve cover gasket replaced?

 

If it is not using oil or coolant, fix the leaks. That engine should have a lot more life in it. Save your money for recreation.

 

When it's happened to us, the coolant leak was so little, I just used plenty of silicone grease around the COP to insulate from the coolant.
It takes a year or two for it to happen again.
I wouldn't worry about it too much or spend to fix.
Pretty common here.

 

Ok ya it's not using coolant just maybe a few ounces in one of the spark plug holes. The oil was a little worse. I wrote down the mileage when it happened and gonna check tomorrow to see how bad the valve cover leak is. If I wanna get the valve cover gasket replaced. What's a good ball park estimate?

 

If it's an o-ring on top of the plug hole, it's a pretty simple replacement. If it's the coolant issue you're worried about, it's the intake manifold leaking.
You might think about doing the oil fix yourself.

 

Is the o ring part of the coil pack? If so don't think that's the problem cause 3 holes had fluid in it. Guess I could just Rtv the coil packs to keep the tiny bit of fluid out of the spark plug holes. How hard is the intake manifold gasket to do? The valve cover bolts don't look very fun to get to and rusty so I won't be doing that one.

 

You could always compression test all the holes to know whether it's worth repairing or is on its way to bigger issues.

 

Not the coil pack seal. That's usually not where the issue comes from. It's under the valve cover, between the top of the head and the plug hole seals.
The manifold becomes much more complicated. I wouldn't mess with that at this time to fix coolant issue.

 

Ah ok. What kind of price am I looking at to do the o seals and the valve cover gaskets

 

Maybe someone can chime in here because I do most of this stuff myself.
I'd expect a shop to charge 2-3 hours of labor plus parts if guessing.

 

Ok hey thanks for all your help. I am gonna check the hokes tomorrow and let u know if I have any fluid in them and check the miles from the last time I cleaned them.

 

Ok so just over 100 miles and 2 out of the 4 spark plug holes on the passanger side had fluid in the. 1 of them the fluid was all the way up to the top of the plug. The drivers side was all clear. I am pretty sure it's the intake manifold gasket. It looks a little wet on the passanger side. I originally put dielectric grease on the top of the coil packs but it was all dried up. So I of course put dielectric grease on the bottom of them and a ton of waterproof grease around the top of them to try and keep the fluid out. Hope this works. Thanks for all the advice and chim in with any other suggestions.

 

Yes, 100 miles and full plug holes is not good. I agree with the manifold gasket, as it sounds like coolant. I can't imagine an oil leak that big.