I finished changing the remaining 6 plugs. These would be the 3 on each side closest to the rear of the engine. I decided to to the passenger side first, get the hard part over. No problems everything looked OK.

Then went to the drivers side. I changed my routine for these. I removed the injector and plug wires and pushed them back. Then removed all the coils. This way I could blow everything out at once. While blowing out 3 and 4 on the drivers side there was a cloud of rust. Tons of it. The boot from the coil also had some rust stain on it. These 2 plugs were very loose. No blowby was occuring but it was looking close. The 5th plug back was ok.


You see all the corrosion around the plugs. My only conclusion is water could have gotten in there at the factory and the engine sat for a while. The boots on the coils looked like they were sealing ok. Water would have to been in there for a while. I always run my engine after I clean it to boil off the water.

Rob

 

Remind me again...How many miles are on those plugs?

Notice a difference in performance with the new ones?

 

How many miled sid you have on it when you change the plugs??? And what year is your truck?

 

The truck is a 99.5. Truck built in June 1999 and the engine was built on April 28, 1999 if I recall. The engine has about 60k on it. A couple of the plugs may look a bit rich. It really isn't the case because I had just changed a tire on a ATV and my hands were dirty from the plug work to. Each tip I touched to check for carbon. The rusty one on the right was untouched. A good color on all of them. Total time for the last six was 45 minutes or better. Really not that hard. Gap was up on all of them, about .060.
Sure glad I did them now. The hex was getting pretty smooth on the rusty ones.

Performance? well I can't really tell anything. When I was building hot rods in the mid-late 70's we never could tell anything from a plug change (even though we still changed them every 5k or so hehe). But the Accel plugs sure looked nice just before you covered them up with the boot.


Rob

 

As far as I know, the modular motors do not have a drain hole in the head to allow water to escape. The engineers would have been well advised to take this into consideration when designing these motors. Sure would have saved a lot of problems later. If there is a drain I sure can't find it.

 

I have a '96 tbird and '97 cougar with the 4.6l, and they both collect water around the plugs. I consider it regular maintenance to check on them.

I too, run the motor for a while after washing under the hood, but it never removes all the water around the spark plugs. I like to take the air hose and blow out the holes after a good wash. However, on the V10, I'd have to remove the coil packs...

art k.

 

I'm just having a hard time believing than when I wash my engine that the water hangs around in the hole for that long of a time. I do wash my engine every now and then. If the plug holes were filling up with water I would be getting a dead miss fromt he water. If the water stayed there for some time the miss would continue. And if water was to get in the hole driving for a day or so would certainly dry it out with outside engine temps easily reaching 200+ degrees. Also other who changed their plugs didn't make note of any rust (and I'm sure they wash their engine or drive through some water from time to time.

In my case this water had to get in there and stay there for a while. I do believe that if water gets into the holes and the coils are in place it will stay there for a while. With lack of heat and no real ventilation to evaporate the water it has no place ot go.

Rob