Just wanted to pass on a bit of personal experience with replacing glowplugs. My original Motocraft (Beru) plugs lasted 86,000 miles in one of the coldest climates in the lower 48. I replaced them a year and a half ago with Autolite plugs that I purchased locally at Napa. They never were all that great. One stopped working within three months and when I went to replace it, it was in pieces. I should have seen the red flag there....

This fall my 97 7.3L truck would take about 15 minutes to fire up when the temp dropped below 40 degrees and it was not plugged in. Blowing enough smoke to get the fire departments attention the whole time. I knew it was time for new plugs and relay. I tested the plugs, only two bad. Replaced them with the old working original Beru plugs. Helped but I was still having problems.

Did some resurch on the internet and found alot of people complaining about problems with the autolite plugs. Decided to replace everything with motocraft parts. Got new ford plugs from autozone for less than the autolite plugs! Started to pull them out and found only two to be normal (other than the two I had just put in). The other 4 had been heating up inside the cylinder head and not the cylinder itself. As a result they had swelled at the base and fused themselves to the heads! Two seperated in two pieces and I had to use a slide hammer and needle nose vise grip to extract the center parts. This was after letting them soak in penitrating oil for two days. One of the remaining ones came out begrudgingly and the fourth one is sheared off in my cylinder head. I tried to drill and easy out what was left, but it is fused into my cylinder head. I called for estimates to get it fixed all over $1000.

So now I hope I can run my truck on 7 glow plugs in a very cold climate. Can't afford the $1000+ to do anything about it especially around x-mas.

I hope someone else can learn from my mistake. I recommend if you are using autolite plugs, get them out before they fuse to the heads, and for everyone else DO NOT USE AUTOLITE GLOW PLUGS in your 7.3L diesel!

Hope this keeps someone else from the nightmare I went through this weekend.....

 

Fridgeddiesel I have heard of people being able to remove the injector and punch the glow plug tip down into the cylinder and then work it out through the injector hole. I cannot personally verify that method, but I have read posts here on this web site stating that is what they did. Good luck to you.