Like all things, Nothing goes well for me. I ran into an issue where I believe I might have to throw in the towel. actually it is 3 issues.

1) the 8 one on the driver rear is broken, the whole lower half is inside. I used the lisle tool to push it down to give me the room to thread it. Will now I can not get the threads made by the second part of the tool. Tried a couple of time and its a no go. Did I reach the moment to send the truck to ford and pay the big price?

2) Plug 3 (rear middle on the passenger side) is almost at the point of plug 8. I was able to remove only the plug thread on the plug but the stem and lower piece is still in there. Dont want to break the stem because it will put in the same issue as plug 8. Ideas to remove the stem without breaking it?

3) plug 4 (rear passenger) I cannot get it to budge. Not even a 1/4 turn. I impact wrench cant fit. ANd its a difficult one because I have to use an elbow.

Frustrated and upset. Hate reading successful stories that I cannot match yet. I know where I first messed up..... I didnt wait enough time!

 

Always let them soak! I would never use an impact on spark plugs personally. Best bet is to let them soak over night then take the lisle tool and have at it again. Good luck I know its not easy.

 

Thanks, I didnt use the impact on any, I was going to try it on the last one that wont budge. Not sure about the other ones. Dont really know what to do with them.

 

Makes you wonder how they ever thought a two piece plug design was a good idea.......was hoping you'd not have this kind of trouble. Yes, the back two cylinders are a royal bit to get to, even if they DIDN'T break.....

Honestly, I wouldn't know what to do either.....you're working blind as it is almost down in those wells.

 

I've never had the pleasure of replacing 2 piece plugs, but if I were in your jam and got to the point where I couldn't come up with anything else I'd pull the heads off.

 

Soaking with pb blaster or what is your recommended penetrating oil/substance?

 

Fixed one of the 3 issues. I was able to wiggle out the stem of plug 3 then use the lisle to remove the rest. Now stuck with the 2 rears.

How hard is it to remove the heads?

 

I was at the same point you were on a couple of my spark plugs when I changed them. I was freaking out and ready to throw in the towel. I tried a couple more things before I called it quits. When using the lisle tool it tells you to put the bar through the center piece and lay it in the spark plug hole. While doing this it was not allowing me to catch the bottom piece of the old plug and catch a thread. I used the push tool one more time to make sure I pushed down as far as it would go. Then I took just the bar without the center piece of the lisle tool and pushed it down to try and catch a thread on the piece that was stuck. I know you are doing it blind but eventually all mine caught a thread and I put the center piece of the lisle tool back on and pulled it out. It worked on all of mine. Took a little while but as long as you keep the bar pretty close to the center of the hole it should line up enough to put the tool back together.

 

Another quick note....I also had one plug that was completely stuck. While attempting to unscrew it it broke free....well at least the threads broke free. The entire plug was still stuck...ended up taking some needle nose pliers and breaking the ceramic...pulling out the pieces and using the lisle tool to extract. My plug change went horrible. All 8 broke off. I followed the instructions exactly printed on the sticky from this forum....still didn't matter. At least with the lisle tool you can get the plugs out. I got to the point where it didn't matter if they broke off.....I just expected it.

 

When I had one break I used clear plastic tubing or something similar like vacuum line and insert that in the shop-vac hose. I taped the line into the end to give it nice suction. I used it to suck out the tiny pieces of porcelain. The porcelain makes it hard for the tool to grip and also will dull the threads. I dd this and had no problem. I broke 5 and one gave me a little issue but after putting the pusher tool back in and break it up some, then vacuuming it out, it went just fine. My friend didn't do that and he had to order another tap piece to remove his other broken ones due to the threads being dull.