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So I brought my 2001 excursion LTD 10 cylinder to local mechanic to replace plugs and also replace possible bad coil packs. they replaced three of the coil packs. when it rained out engine was missing bad. so they replace the plugs and three of the coil packs and the truck ran great until it rained again and had the same problem. so my son who is a tech teacher convinced me to let him just change all the coil packs and replace with MSD version.
he discovered passenger side rear screw was snapped off. The bolt just kept turning as he tried to remove it and he picked up the coil and it just came out. in fact he said all of the ones on that side so far were cross threaded but he was able to tighten them down.
i’m sure the mechanic snapped it off as he was replacing the plugs this was not one of the coil packs he replaced but still needed to remove it to do the plugs.
does anybody have any ideas how to hold this down? very difficult spot to get to to drill it out or do you think it will be OK without being screwed down?
thank you for any suggestions
The rubber coil boot is a very tight fit onto the spark plug and an even tighter fit onto the coil, so even without the hold down bolt the coil shouldn’t go anywhere.
Whenever you change the spark plugs you really should also change the rubber boots as they do wear and leak voltage, causing misses. The boot in your picture doesn’t look like it’s new from the recent plug change.
The conventional wisdom around here says to stick to OEM for the coils, so either Motorcraft or Denso, who is the OEM manufacturer for Motorcraft. And of course Motorcraft plugs.
From your story about having misses following rain it sounds like you are getting water in the plug wells due to rain water getting into the engine bay at the hood to cowl area gasket. There is a gap in that gasket that can allow water to drop onto the engine and get to the plugs. You can seal up that gap and avoid getting that rain water down to the plugs. There is a thread on this up in the TECH FOLDER at the top of the EX forum page.
thank you so much for the reply and info. Well my son researched about these MSD coil packs and I notice a big difference in pick up right away.
I will definitely check out what you said about poss water getting in from hood. that could be part of the issue also but the new set of coil packs I think solved the problem.
My son also noticed that they didn’t apply any dielectric grease when they replaced the three coil packs last week. he mentioned some other type of grease that should be applied also that wasn’t done can’t remember what it was exactly.
As far as the boots that picture is one of the old coil packs that he replaced he replaced all 10.
I did see one person posted with the same problem about the snapped off bolt where he wedged an old boot on top of the cop and has had no problems for 30 K so I may give that a shot I guess it can’t hurt. see att pic
thank you again very much for all your info much appreciated
Originally Posted by WE3ZS
The rubber coil boot is a very tight fit onto the spark plug and an even tighter fit onto the coil, so even without the hold down bolt the coil shouldn’t go anywhere.
Whenever you change the spark plugs you really should also change the rubber boots as they do wear and leak voltage, causing misses. The boot in your picture doesn’t look like it’s new from the recent plug change.
The conventional wisdom around here says to stick to OEM for the coils, so either Motorcraft or Denso, who is the OEM manufacturer for Motorcraft. And of course Motorcraft plugs.
From your story about having misses following rain it sounds like you are getting water in the plug wells due to rain water getting into the engine bay at the hood to cowl area gasket. There is a gap in that gasket that can allow water to drop onto the engine and get to the plugs. You can seal up that gap and avoid getting that rain water down to the plugs. There is a thread on this up in the TECH FOLDER at the top of the EX forum page.
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