Yeah the TSB says no air tools. But I've heard lots of people have success with them. Going to do mine come spring. Not sure if I'll use impact though. I know as a mechanic myself there is times an impact is the best way to remove certain things even if not recommended.

 

I can't speak for good or bad advice. I did both methods (impact and by hand). I still had some break. I ran sea foam in the truck like many other people stated before I attempted it. I had 5 total break on my truck. The very first one by hand came out nice. Second one broke. So did the third. So I went to the impact method. First couple came out. The others broke. So I am very mixed. I feel if they are going to break they will. Some have better success than others. Like I stated, I just broke the porcelain up the best I could and used a shop vac to suck the little pieces out. The thread locker is a great idea to put on the tap and let it set. My friends tap was dull and the threads were chewed up. He lasted through 3 plugs before he had to order another tap piece. I took it to work and resharpened them and did all five with the vacuum method.

 

And the TSB was written by.......the same people who designed this terrible plug. There are hundreds of people who have used an impact, including many Ford service techs.

 

Do you honestly believe they engineered the plug with that intention? For it to break?

 

No, of course not. But they would have discovered this issue with proper testing. If they chocked this plug in a vice and snapped it in half, with moderate torque, no engineer would have wanted his name on it... I feel as though this plug was rushed to market thanks to outside forces and inside forces, while servicing certain benchmarks... Just by looking at it, the tooling expense and time to manufacture a 1 piece plug must have been at least 1 good reason... I'm sure if champion saved any money on it, they would have a better product then their current 1 piece plug.

 

I work for ford and whenever I do them I crack them free with a ratchet, spray in-force on them let them sit for like 2 minutes then use my 3/8 air gun with an impact swivel, this takes away some of the pressure, this is what I've always done haven't had much trouble

 

What they did was overreact to a plug blowout problem on 99-03 models. They tried to reinvent the wheel. I'm sure the problem came up in testing but they chose to do nothing about it....we see this practice all the time. Sometimes manufacturers choose to ignore the problem, hoping it goes away, rather than address it.

 

I used an impact as I had no choice. Removing them by hand was absolutely impossible. On top of that, the impact allowed me to drive the Lisle tool into the broken spark plug much further than hand turning would have ever allowed. I broke every single one, and #8 was stripped. All in all, it worked just fine in the end and I saved a s**tload of money.

I agree. I have tried to do it without the impact wrench. As a matter of fact, two of the plugs were stuck in there to the point I switched from a 3/8-inch to a 1/2-inch impact.

There will be an ongoing debate whether or not to use air tools, just like an ongoing debate on whether to change the plugs with a hot/warm or cold engine. I used air tools on a cold engine with carb cleaner and PB Blaster soaking in. I was able to tackle mine, and if I can remove 7 broken plugs, one stripped and broken plug at 160,000km then anyone else here can too.