Ok guys, I have a 2001 4.2L F-150 manual transmission 4x4. It's basically a pretty bare bones truck. I bought it second hand from a dealer back in March and have determined that I want to start learning about how it works. I want to start doing my own simple repairs on it (ie oil changes, spark plugs, etc). The problem is that my truck didn't have an owner's manual in it. I picked up auto repair for dummies, and am pretty well into it, and I found an owner's manual on ebay. That came today, so I popped the hood to check out all the stuff, and I think I see where the spark plugs are located, but I just wanted to make sure. Looking under the hood, it seems that they are just to the left of the engine and right of the battery. They are lined up in two rows, with three on each row. They seem to have grey caps and wired attached to the top, and I followed the wires around to the other side of the engine, where I can see at least two of the wires connect to a piece under the engine. My first question is am I right? Are these the spark plugs? Secondly, I took two of the grey caps/wires off from the rows, looked inside, then put them back. Is this going to damage anything? Did I screw something up by taking them off, or did I take them off improperly? Thanks.
-Dan

 

What you should see under the hood is a series of six wires, with 3 on each side of the block. I don't have a 4.2, so I don't know what color the wires are, but assuming they were gray, they would go to three equally spaced apart spaces, and would be symetrical on the other side of the block. These wires should all run from the distributor (looks like a hockey puck with wires coming out of it) and go to the engine. You did not harm anything by removing and replacing that wire, if it was in fact the plug, but a complex fuel injected motor such as a 4.2 isn't the place to start out. Check out howstuffworks.com and search for engines. They have detailed explanations, drawing, diagrams, and cut-away pictures (all these help ALOT in learning to understand how an engine works). That should give you a good start and a little more direction and understanding when you look under the hood of your truck. An owner's manual only tells you the basics about the features of your truck and how to use them. It's not much of a repair manual. Before performing maintenance on your truck, make sure you're completely comfortable with what you're doing. There's a first time for everything of course, but if something in the instructions confuses you, don't attempt it yourself. Mistakes from an inexperienced wrench can be very expensive to fix. Pick up a Haynes or Chilton's repair manual for your truck (available at the local autozone or online), and read through it. If you have any questions, there's a lot of knowledge on this site, don't be afraid to ask.

 

Not sure about the 4.2 but I think they might not have a distributer cap like the above post explained. It might have a coil pack that should be rectangular with the 6 sparkplug wires going into it. Hope that helps

 

They all have a 6 tower coil pack.