Hey all,
just bought an 01 e250, 140k miles, with the 5.4, sure enough it spit a spark plug a couple days after I bought it. did some searching around and am not sure if there is going to be enough room in the van to do the time sert and wondering if I am going to have to pull the engine to do it? does anyone on here have any experience with this? I have watched tons of videos on it being done on f-series trucks but very limited info on this being done on e-series vans. thanks in advance!

 

I haven't done one yet but it's done w/o pulling the motor and it's a PITA

 

yeah doesn't look/sound like fun, but must be done. lol thanks for your reply.

 

My 2000 E150 did it at 150k miles. No need to remove the engine but it is tight. I do all my work on my vehicles except when the learning curve doesn't justify the cost. I took it to an local mechanic and did it for less than $200 ($150?). The cost of the tooling and risk of messing the head on something I may not do ever again (hopefully) was not worth it.

 

good deal!
some jobs are just too much hassle as I age

 

just called a local shop, guy sounds like he knows what hes talking about and said he would charge me $300 to time sert the one cylinder and change all the other spark plugs! think im gonna go ahead and do that lol

 

 

 

That sucks. How was it running before it spit the plug?

 

 

what? and drive it missing 3 plugs?

 

 

It has the PI "performance improved" heads, the 97-99 are lucky not to have those, started in 2000, they have 3 threads on the plugs, not sure what genius thought that was acceptable especially since aluminum is known to seize to the steel plugs, it is so common there is a nice thread repair insert, not a helicoil. As for claiming chipped, how, did he break the insert off in it and is now claiming the damage was done by the plug extraction, removal of the plug just removed the threads, not pieces of head.

 

he said the cylinder that I pulled the spark plug from (cyl 2) is damaged more than just stripped threads and that a time sert will not fix it and would still have blow by.
he then said on cyl 3 that the intake manifold gasket was leaking coolant into the spark plug tube, and showed me a video of everything.
and then on cyl 8 someone else tried to time sert or possibly heli coil that spark plug hole and that they screwed it up. I usually don't take anything to shops and work on it myself but this was something I felt I should take to someone who has done it before. and him showing me proof of his diag (the video) I trust him.
I think my next step is just get a hold of a used engine. pull the heads and send them to my local machine shop and have them cleaned, pressure tested, and then should I have them time sert all the spark plug holes for preventative maintenance, or just make sure the spark plug threads are good and clean and install new motorcraft plugs and overtorque them? I heard over torque them to 5 ft-lbs over factory torque spec. just scares me as they are aluminum heads....
thanks to everyone who has chimed in to help me.

 

it ran okay, had a miss for sure. I bought it like that trusting the guy that sold it to me saying it needed a couple ignition coils. not knowing that these engines had this problem I bought it. next day I fired it up and it sounded like it had a small exhaust leak. drove it, sound got louder til it finally popped and then I thought maybe since it had been sitting it might have blown out the exhaust manifold gasket or the manifold itself. did some research and found out that It did indeed pop a spark plug. lol so now I'm in too deep to this thing already, might as well put an engine in it .