dan5993

Last week, I was leaving the store and heard a massive bang followed by a terrible noise when I turned my truck on. I immediately killed it and wound up having it towed to a shop. Turns out the spark plug in cylinder 5 decided to blow out. The repair was to pull the head and have a machine shop repair the hole. This cost $1700 (including the tow), lots of gaskets replaced, etc. When I picked up the truck it was misfiring like crazy. No CEL present. I went back into the shop and they more or less shrugged and said that they didn’t know if it was doing that before, so they didn’t try to fix it. Their scanner wasn’t picking anything up either. They wanted me to leave it there so they could look at it in a few days, but I’ve already been without a vehicle for 5 days now. I got it home (only live 2 miles away) and decided to swap the spark plugs since they’d told me they had reused the ones that were in it; I thought maybe the one that blew out was damaged. Nope.

So now I have a truck that was dead reliable for 10 years and is now undriveable. It was running fine up until it wasn’t. Any ideas on what is causing this?

2005 F150, 4.2l V6, RWD 5sp manual with 135,000 miles. The spark plugs and wires were changed at about 90,000. The alternator failed and was replaced around that same time. The coil pack went out and was replaced at around 125,000 miles.

raski

For that $1700 you paid them, I would be camping on their doorstep, greeting them at opening time and have them look into it. You have to give them an opportunity to correct it and if you would have left it at that time, you likely would have it back by now..I wouldn't have left their parking lot if was running that badly when they handed you the keys. If you went in there saying to" fix the blown out plug" instead of saying it runs bad and it's broke, your hands may be tied as they fixed the blown out plug if that's what you requested.

dan5993

So I took it back, it took them a few days to get to it. Turns out that the plug at the coil wasn't all the way in.... which was literally the first thing I checked upon getting it home before swapping the plugs.

So after $1700 worth of repairs and 13 days, my truck that's worth maybe $3000 on a good day is running like a champ again. Guess I'll have to keep it for another 5 years.

Apdl

After reading your 12,000 lb towing post what happened to this rig?

dan5993

Still driving it, I’m planning on trading it in. The first dealership I looked at offered me two grand for it