Hello All,

First time posting. I have 1998 F150 with a Triton 4.6. I am by no means experienced when it comes to anything other than pretty basic repairs and maintenance. I dove in to do my first tune-up and when replacing my spark plugs and wires, I found that on the fourth plug the socket won't engage the plug. I've tried a few things-took an awl and tried to loosen any debris that might be clogging the space between the plug and the shaft, stuck a thin rubber tube attached to a vacuum in there to remove loosened debris, removed the gasket from the socket, put just the socket down the shaft and gradually inserted the extension thinking that the plug might be longer than the others. No luck. There is a plug in there but the socket feels like its just sitting on a smooth piece of metal and spinning. All other plugs came out without any problem. Just cant figure out why it won't grab. It's pretty far back there and I can't see down the shaft, so I don't know what I can do to get it out. Any advice? Thank you.

 

Take a piece of 3/4 copper water pipe and cut some notches on one end, put it over the plug and twist it, and see if that will clean out the debris.

 

Have you tried to blow the hole out with compressed air? but I'm liking the pipe option. Compressed air and a Awl, or long pick.... If I remember correctly, your PCM and Heater hoses are all right there... when I do one of those truck I normally remove that one heater hose to get a better access point to the plug.

 

for instance my champions take a different socket size than the original motorcraft plugs . I did away with the originals because they were two piece and had a bad habit of breaking during removal . I forgot the sizes . maybe 5/8 and 9/16 .

 

Thanks for the responses. It was just loaded with debris. So a number of attempts of picking debris and blowing out eventually gave me enough space to get the socket down. Surprised because none of the other plugs had hardly any junk in there. Also, surprised that that much crap could get down there at all. I figured the plug boot would keep the vast majority out.

The copper pipe idea would probably work great. Thanks again for the responses.

 

Some awesome ideas for getting debris out ! Thanks guys ! Going to tackle this job tomorrow a.m. on my 2010 5.4 .