When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Not sure if its related or not, But i just got done replacing the top 8 spark plugs in the pickup, non of them looked all that bad to me, but time will tell, I will be replacing the bottom 8 plugs before too long, just didnt have time last night to get to them. I did notice that my rpm drops right after shift seem to have gone away, this is the first time driving the pickup since I changed the plugs, Hopefully it will fix the issue..
I thought it was a bit odd that all of the plugs had a white tip where coil makes contact with the top of the plug. not sure if its related to the issue or not..
Plugs are layed out from the front to the rear of the motor on the respective left (passenger) and right (driver) sides from middle to the outside.
I did the top 8 today. I didn't have enough time or energy to start the bottom ones. I'm 6'2" and I don't see how anyone much shorter than that can get back in there for those back ones without climbing most of the way into the engine compartment. Took me a couple hours (I go slower than most people I think). I'm NOT looking forward to the bottom ones.
The back drivers side was the hardest to get to, but it still wasn't bad.
The clips (with the red tabs) on the coils were a bit of a pain, but I found a video on youtube that helped with those...it didn't take me more than a minute or two on any of them to get them off.
I spent some time today looking at the old spark plugs (12 now, only 4 to go) and probably 9 out of the 12 had gaps over .050. My understanding is that they're supposed to be at around .044. They were all Motorcraft plugs and based on what I know about the history of the truck, I believe they were the originals. All of the new plugs (oem), were gapped out of the box at .044 or very close.
I took it for a short drive and I feel like it had a little more pep, not a lot, but enough to surprise me when I wasn't even paying attention to it.
The truck only has 44k miles on it, but it has really high hours (just under 5000) so I think it spent most of its early days as a running-all-day, but not going far, work truck. Which is why I'm changing the plugs now.
Now I just have the 4 lower ones on the passenger side to go. I'll likely be removing the wheel well liner and the tire for those.
The bottom drivers side 4 were not too bad. I was able to mostly get to them from the top, not through the wheelwell. It's not fun working blindly, but it's manageable.
I used a bench, they sell them at harbor freight or lowes and home depot during black friday for like 30 bucks, they are about 3ft wide and maybe 16 inches tall, but they make a nice platform for standing on and working on this tall of a pickup. I have this friday off, so if its not raining and im not working on the house Ill try and those swapped over, along with my shocks.
Finished my plug change today. The bottom passenger side plugs were by far the easiest four out of the whole thing for me. That was a surprise for me because I thought they were going to be the hardest. I took the wheelwell liner out and that made all the difference. They were all visible from the side and I didn't have to take the tire off to get to them, although I was prepared to if I thought it would have been better.
Here's a pic of the old plugs, again, it's possible, if not likely, that these are the originals and have just shy of 5000 hours on them...the truck only has 40k miles on it though.
The first four and last four are bottom ones, the two middle sets are the ones from on top. With the top plugs being closest to the front grill and going down to the bottom ones that were closest to the firewall.
So about about 2 months ago I had a weird issue that kind of felt like a shifting issue while hauling an empty dump trailer down the freeway, Turns out it was my Cyl-1 spark plug wire was not solidly on the plug...
After talking to some buddies I decided to buy all new motocraft plug wires, I had replaced the wires with denso's back in 2017 when this was posted... Well.... I just found some wierd issues.. I went and pulled the plugs on the drivers side, and the first cyclindar and last cylendar were missing their electrodes!
Needless to say I will be replacing the plugs today and then adding the new motocraft wires.
