Eric7575

Normally I am not such a chicken sh&*....on my cars but then again I never paid 46k for a vehicle until I bought my F-150. I will do it in the morning... I kind of suspected that I needed to pull a little harder but after pulling a little harder on the wiring clip and breaking it I freaked out. The wife is not really happy with me doing stuff that can void the warranty on my 1 year old truck..... I explained to her that as a man I am supposed to be able to change spark plugs and that I have done it before....on a 2002 Honda Civic that I did not give a sh&* about. This one is my baby....

OddBall

One thing to be aware of, well, a couple of things are first and foremost, the plugs are delicate and crappy in the extreme. Second, I was able to remove most of the coil packs without pulling the plug out. As I have an odd idle condition now i'm going to put new plugs in and I'll detail which coils do not need the connector pulled.

The coil packs just need, like others have said, a sharp but short tug upwards. I was using a thick plastic door tool to wedge under them to get them moving and it worked.

Eric7575

I got the first one out which was gapped to .036-.035......it had some carbon around the edge of the threads which I am not sure that I should be concerned about. I am running an SCT tune.... I am also using a torque wrench although the increments are pretty big. I have it set to 130 inch pounds as it jumps in 10's. I know it should be 133 inch pounds now but I figure that 3 inch pounds is nominal.

badtziscool

So a little background for my situation. I started to experience a rough idle on my '12 Eco with 24k miles. I wanted to check my spark plug gaps but I just could not get the COPs out no matter how hard I pulled. So I just let the dealer handle it. According to the work order they pulled cops out and two of them "fell apart" upon extraction. What I think is that they managed to break two of them while pulling them out bc one of the cops they reinstalled has a piece of plastic broken off of it. It doesn't look like it'll affect performance or durability so I'm just going to leave that alone. Afterwards I wanted to double check their work and now when I go to pull the cops I can extract them with just two fingers. So that's just to let you know how pulling the cops SHOULD be.

Well, when I checked my gaps all of them were around 31 - 33 but one of them was 36. Also my plugs looked just like yours but I do have some off white colored deposits on the electrode. Most likely from me adding some fuel additive I've used in the past. I swapped them with new sp519 iridium plugs from the dealer (he said the sp519 replaces sp528 so I dunno) all gapped to 30-31 and now my truck runs like it did when I first got it.

So that's my experience with the rough idle. And yes torque specs should be 11 ft-lbs.

Eric7575

Well I will say this.... Next time I embark on a project on my Ecoboost remind me to pay someone, LOL. That said I finished after about 4 hours. Next time I swap the plugs out it will be much easier as the hardest part was figuring out the wire plugs and pulling the coil packs out. I had to use my needle nose plier around the hole for the bolt and used both hands as my right hand alone cautious style went out the window after it started raining on me (pouring here in central Florida all day). I believe now that I know what to do and the fact that I now have all the right tools I can do it in 1-1.5 hours. I managed to break two safety clips one during extraction and the other putting it back in (they are super fragile). My truck was cold when I started it and it idled pretty high at first and a bit rough. The engine sounded different as well but I don't know if its the 93 octane SCT tune or the plugs (I put the tune in last night and did not actually listen to the engine). It sounds a bit like my old 2007 Honda Vtech (I know strange). it drove fine however it was short trip to make sure I was not getting any misfires. I made a short video clip explaining the process for those that dare to try it. It was not easy as I had to get waist deep and pull with a lot of force on the coil packs to get them out especially the one on the drivers side way back in the engine. I will try to post the video later...

Rockhopper

Sp-534 replaced the sp-528 when the 2013 models came out and most have been putting in the sp-534 when replacing plugs on their '11's & '12's. Motorcrafts website shows the sp-519's are for the 5.0. Are you sure the dealer gave you the correct plugs?

badtziscool

You know. I wondered that myself so I spent three straight days figuring out what the diff was between 528, 534, and 519 and all I could find was that they're pregapped differently. They all have same tip, depth, thread size, taper, temp rating, everything. So I figure that if I was going to gap the plugs anyways, it doesn't matter what they were pregapped to.

I'm going to check the plugs after driving around for a little to see how they're holding up but so far the truck is running like a champ.

Eric7575

By the way.....thanks on the info on how to pull the coil packs....they had heavy suction and were hard to pull

OddBall

Glad I could help! I'm not looking forward to replacing the plugs again but the rough idle annoys the hell out of me.

Mach 1

U guys are blowing compressed air down the SP hole before pulling plugs?

Every piece of dirt, grease, water..falls down into the combustion chamber if not removed before pulling plugs..Also don't forget the antisieze and di-electric grease...