MY MONSTER

I hate to say use champion but i belive there the only one that make a one piece plug. Good luck. Also jet tools makes a couple kits one for the ceramic and one for the tip.

tenglish

I just wrote a check today to my mechanic... sent my 06 5.4 to the shop because I had an intermittent miss when I was driving at interstate speeds... had him change the plugs and figured I would need a coil pack too. (I am a cop, and have experienced similar problems with my cruiser that has a 4.6, and a coil pack fixed it) He called me and told me that the plug had broken inside the head on the second plug he attempted to remove, and I would have to take it to ford to use the special too to extract the plug. I called Quality Ford in Mayfield Ky, and they told me that a spark plug job was $646.xx, each coil pack would be $100.xx and they could only tell me shop rate was $66.50/hr on extracting the broken plug and any others that broke. I seen the writing on the wall and seen that I was getting screwed. I found the lisle tool and ordered it, had it ups shipped to my mechanic, and advised him of the prices ford gave me. I wrote him a check today for $406.31 to change all 8 spark plugs and 1 coil pack. My #3 cylinder was missing intermittently before the plugs were replaced, and is still intermittently misfiring. The coil has been ruled out as not being the reason for the miss. I have heard that it may be an issue with the cat converter? My truck already had a cold air intake on it and magnaflow dual side exhaust (2 pipes from one big muffler exit on the pass side) when I bought it... You guys have any guidance on the miss?

Markdas

Firstly, well done on rationally thinking through the solution to the stupid bill Ford wanted to charge. It seems that the plug design and breaking issue can be a real money maker for some garages.

As for the misfire...are you sure its isolation to #3....has your mechanic tried moving #3 coil pack to another cylinder to see if the problem moves with it? It could still be the electrical connection to the coil pack on that cylinder.

Same deal with the injector...move it to another cylinder (swop it) and see if the misfire moves, it could be a fouled injector.

Are there any fault codes being generated?

Now that the plugs have been changed, it could be worth a final test of swopping over a couple of plugs and see if you have a faulty new plug......

If it stays with #3 alone, then it may be time to check the timing or, remove the cylinder head and have a look at the valves or piston rings.

You could get the mechanic to carry out a compression test before doing that, see if you have even combustion in all cylinders? If #3 is showing low, you can check if its piston rings by adding a little oil into that cylinder through the plug hole and repeating the test. If the compression improves greatly, it could be the rings not sealing on their own.....if not, it could be the valve seats or stems allowing compression to escape.

Let us know how you get on please

tenglish

The coil pack was swapped over to #1 thinking that the miss would move to # 1 but it did not, it stayed at #1, it is throwing codes, but its just identifying a missfire on #3. I do not know the exact code that was thrown by the computer. If it is injectors, where would be the best place to get the "best bang for my buck?" I don't drive my truck a lot due to having a cruiser issued to me to drive, but when I do drive it I would be nice not to miss out, but I don't want to have more money invested in the truck then what its worth!

RahX

Motorcraft makes a one piece plug that costs 24$ around here. I put the original $7.50 2 piece plugs back in it with the anti-seize on em. I don't foresee any future problems with the plugs breaking off so I didn't see the need to pay 3 times as much for a plug.

Markdas

Maybe get your mechanic (or do it yourself) swop an injector with another first, to see if you can move the misfire.....that way, you can identify if its a cylinder or plug/injector problem.

Or get one from ebay, even if it came from a low mileage running engine, its just to see if the injectors need to be changed.