Hello gentleman, I've been a long time follower of this forum and have gathered much useful information from it, and it's time I payed a little back. Let me tell you about my project. I have a 2000 F250 Crew 6.8L w/ PI heads and currently at 191K with no issues or end in sight (motor runs great! I love it!). At 187K I changed the spark plugs as a PM (Last changed out by me at 93K). As is typical with my truck still having the stock manifolds and studs I have many broken manifold studs and can hear them leaks from the cab, but about 2K miles after changing the plugs I began to hear what I thought was a worsening exhaust leak. Turns out it was not and exhaust leak... it was the #9 spark plug working its way out of its threads. My biggest mistake here is simply just not popping the hood and doing an inspection, if I had done so I could have caught this problem far earlier. As you might expect the spark plug blew out its hole, taking half the threads with it. My disappointment was huge at first discovery, because of course the threads were gone when I tried to put the plug back in. Thinking that my best route was just to plug and play a crate or rebuilt motor and get on with it, I soon discovered that the Cal-Van repair Kit (Through help from this thread) was my best route and Waaayyy more than the bandaid fix that I had originally thought it may be. So I took my time and took the motor out of my truck, I actually really enjoyed it! Right now the motor is sitting on a stand in my garage. I'm replacing the broken manifold studs with a Banks Header and Y pipe Kit that I ordered today from 5Star (thanks again to this forum for the recommendation) along with their standard 6 tune programer. I can't wait to get at all back in the truck.

 

Nice work

Are you going to just repair that one hole, or do inserts in them all?

 

Thanks! I have more photos and videos of the project that I plan to add to this post. As of right now I'm just going to do the one plug hole but of course I will be checking all the other plugs and may end up doing more if needs be. Would you recommend doing them all? It is something I have considered.

 

I'm not gonna tell anyone to spend more money or time than they feel comfortable with... If you do one, and it's on the stand, and it went well... I would personally be sorely tempted to do them all. Or at least the back ones that you can't do easily with the engine in the truck

 

I’ve done three modulars with CalVan kit. I did one previously with timesert and went back and redid it as it was a buddys Mustang. I didn’t know of the CalVan kit at the time I did it first. A buddy turned me on to that kit. . I did all of the plugs at once. Took the whole day the first time as I was doing it slowly but I figure if one went the rest won’t need too far behind. Besides I hate replacing good coils just because I waited to do them as they broke. Buy the kit do them all at once.