stackz

I'm in a huge mess with the plugs on my 06 5.4 3v @ 65k miles. 5 of 8 broke off. two of them were easy peesy to pull out with the lisle tool after I realized you just need to push until you here the ground strap snap.

however, the last 3 broke weirdly on the porcelain and I've just got a bunch of chunks in the hole. even after fashioning my own stepped vacuum to try to vacuum the pieces...well its hard when they are mixed with friggin penetrating oil lol.

the lisle tool says in the instructions "The porcelain cannot be pushed through the spark plug tip since it is retained by the taper of the tip and the design of the tool controls the overall length the porcelain can be pushed."

does this mean I can bottom the pusher tool out without worrying about the porcelain flopping out into the cylinder? does this take into account all kinds of shards from extra porcelain pieces falling into the hole that was made by the tool after you pull it out so the puller cant friggin grip? I mean wtf man. I dont want to start pushing again and have the pieces that fell in....push the porcelain end into the cylinder.

what say you?

Mod (Ret.)

Did you read through the "spark plug" sticky at the top of this forum? It's been monitored by one of our resident experts GATORB8 for some time now.

stackz

I did good sir. And might I say trying to type a response on a droid takes some faith lol.

I have been all over that thread as well as many others. Only one thing sticks out in my mind and it was a thread I came across yesterday where dude was like " no wonder I had a missfire the ground strap was broke" while he was showing a pic of the plug lower half with the pot slain basically bottomed I think. I just remember the ground strap level with the porcelian which is farther than I have pushed is all. I push unitl I hear the pop from the ground strap and then stop. Im thinking for these three I may need to just bottom the pushed tool out but im scared of dropping porcelain knot the chamber...rift now im borrowing my aunts van while she's in the hospital. After that im screwed lol

picaflor

Hi Stacks, if you see in the picture below, the first spark plug, the ceramic has been pushed all the way with the lisle tool into the "cup" -lets call it like that ,i dont know the name for each part of the multipart motorcraft sparkplugs-

you can see the ceramic protrudes all the way possible, that far that the ground had broken in both sides, but even so, all the way is no far enough that the ceramic fall in pieces in the cylinder. as the rear part of the "cup" is connected to the lisle tool when you are removing, all the small ceramic things are sandwiched between the top of the ceramic protruding and the lisle tool. none of those should go into the engine.

still you can have some of the broken ceramic to stick to the sides of the wall of the spark plug hole and they could fall inside once you remove the "cup", but for that, cleaning the most possible the spark plug hole before extracting should do it.

by the way, i used the picture below in the forum because the ground snapped in both sides and then i had to search for it in the cylinder chamber.... no, i never found that. either way, it went thru the exhaust valve, or i removed it while i was vacuuming the chamber before to install the new spark plug.

stackz

cool thanks for the pic. makes me feel a "little" more confident for this afternoon.

anyway, heres where I'm at.


#1, #6, #7 came out good. #2, #3, #8 all broke the same and #4 and #5 broke the same. for some reason #8 decided to crunch up like #4/#5 did as you will see in the following pics (which are all of #5).

they all left a lot of extra porcelain down in the plug hole. when I used the pusher, it just mashed all of this up and with all the lubricant I had in the holes...it just made a mess that compressed air couldnt push out.

mmm yummy goodness


anyway, I fashioned my small shop vac into a way to get down into the tube itself right on top of the carnage so I could suck it out. thank god I keep all my extra hose lengths and plastic hose lengths...


here's the aftermath...at least I can now see the stupid lower portion of the plug.


and then for some ungodly reason, the lisle pusher tool decides to screw up on the very first thread so now I have to hope I can find a thread tap in this huge size locally today sigh.


I'm also worried I wont be able to get all those little chunks of porcelain out and they'll fall into the cylinders and either score the cylinder walls or do damage to the valves on their way out of the cylinder. I'm "hoping" that if I DO manage to get the three plug pieces out, that when I turn the engine over with all the plugs out, it will push the remaining pieces out of the cylinders through the spark plug holes.

I'm really really really hating this. I still cant believe this plug design made it to production. I mean seriously? you flog test engines to death but you dont try to do maintenance to them and figure this out before going to production? wtf ford? wtf...

picaflor

if you have used grease to try to remove then, try the opposite. use some liquid wrench of wd40 to remove the grease and make those bits float, them use the vacuum. its better if you clean most possible before removing it.

stackz

no, didnt use any grease. I used PB blaster. so wait, the porcelain pieces will float in wd40? I thought they would be heavier?

anyway, possibly very useless info for the masses but the spark plug thread is M16x1.5, just got back from buying a tap/die set so I could chase the threads on the pusher tool. I took one of the spark plug pieces with me to test it in-store if anyone was wondering, the 9/16 and 5/8 taps at the parts store do NOT work lol. Its good as new now, so if the rain holds up this afternoon I'm going to give em another try.

demingrick

The HORROR!

I've got a 2004 with the 5 code 3V that just turned over 60,000 miles and even though I wrench on everything myself I might leave this job to the professionals.

Good luck man, I hope you get it all back to normal without having to pull the heads.

picaflor

sorry, bad translation... they wont float, they just wont be to sticky...

Johnml

Let us know the results