2007 F150, 5.4L King Ranch. 87000 miles. Bought last Sept.

Finally got around to changing out the original spark plugs. Looked at Motorcraft, Autolite and Champion. Chose Champion due to the fact that they appear tobe a 1 piece metal construction.

Great.

Bought the Lisle broken spark plug extractor, the OTC 5.4L Ford spark plug remover set, new boots and the Champion plugs.

Planned to do one side at a time. With engine warm, I gave each plug on the left side a 1/8 turn and sprayed in a good shot of Sea Foam and let it sit for an hour.

Came back and promptly broke the first 2, 3rd came out whole. Held off on the 4th till the broken ones removed.

One came out with the Lisle tool, the 2nd would not budge.

After 2 days of trying, I admitted defeat, called a tow truck and had the beast hooked into an independent shop. Good group of guys.

It took the tech all of 4 hours to remove the remaining plugs, change out the boots (using the dielectric grease provided), nickel based anti-seize (again provided). The tech that did the work said that the other 4 plugs on the right bank broke. The Lisle tool worked for him. He has magic fingers.

He had seen the Lisle tool but did not own one. He does now.

Lot smoother idle and runs like a scalded cat.

No problems so far, and if there are, I will be sure to let the forum know.

 

I changed mine myself when I bought the truck with 186,000 miles. The plugs were changed before but I do not know how long. I sprayed power blaster in the spark plug openings and put a wrench on them and moved them back and forth, back and forth and they all came out nicely. Some of them made a little noise coming out but they did come out. I replaced them with the Champion plugs and now have 210,500 miles and it runs like a champ and uses absolutely no oil between changes. I put new COPs on it too and lubricated them. This plug issue is blown way out of proportion on these trucks. I am not a mechanic and it took me about 4 hours to do the entire job. The mechanics wanted $400.00 to do it. Oh, mine is an 05 5.4 too.

 

In Minneapolis it's "$100 a hole", plus the cost of the parts. So a thousand bucks and you have new plugs! If any stick in, head(s) come off and it's more $$$.

 

Just ended up replacing mine in a 2005 5.4 Triton 3v. I had the #1 plug foul out on my while on a trip. I thought I would fall over when the garage wanted to charge me $500 to change plugs. They said something about them breaking but I had never heard of the whole plug problem.

So, I just drove it home and changed them. I had no trouble whatsoever removing them and it only took a couple of hours. But, mine had been replaced with the champion plugs.

Anyway, after seeing all of the stuff on the internet about the plugs I took them back out and really coated them with anti-seize compound. I do wish I would have got the Champion, I had no problems removing them. The new SP515 are supposed to be improved but they are not one solid piece.

 

Those plugs look pretty good except the one on the right. I guess that is the one that Fouled.