I'm going to give this a go this summer when I can dedicate a couple days to it before I go off to school. I'll probly but just a tad under 70K when I do it so I'm going to take every precaution I can. Let it sit overnight with the penetrating oil, turn plugs once and spray some more and let it sit for another couple hours. It seems like guys are having good luck by doing that and they also say if the plug doesn't creek as it come's out it is more than likely going to break.

 

I'm really happy i have the v6 for this reason. But seriously - don't factory platinum plugs only need to be changed after 100,000 mi? I took my factory plugs out of mine @ 112,000 mi and they weren't terribly bad at that point?

 

Yeah they are rated for 100k miles. Two schools of thought though. The first is to get them out earlier in hopes that the buildup isn't too bad and less chance of breakage. The second is if it isn't broke don't mess with it. I'm a tad over 37k miles on mine right now so I'm actually somewhere in between and not real sure which way I want to go. I live in Hawaii and do very little driving to begin with and even less now that I started riding a motorcycle last year. I still have a minimum of 18 months left on the island and know in that time I'll probably put less than 3k miles on the truck so in late 2010 when I transfer (unless I get another tour in Hawaii) I'll have a 06 F150 with maybe 40k miles on it. Long ways from the 100k miles and who knows I may even trade it in on something when I get back to the mainland so I won't even have to mess with it to begin with. Just not sure which way I'm going to go on this.

 

I have an '06 w/15K miles and, like you, I'm just going to try and get my 100 miles out of the plugs. Sounds expensive to replace them. When the time comes, I'll let the dealer change them. If they break them off, it's their problem.

H2

 

Make sure you ask them first. I asked my dealership and they told me if they break it then it's their responsibility. Of course he also said that if the plug appears frozen they will call me and ask if I want them to proceed. Well they know there's a good chance the plugs are going to be frozen in there, that's a known problem with these trucks. That's just there way around breaking a plug and getting out of the responsibility. They can simply say, we'll we called you and you told us to proceed.

They did tell me they follow the TSB.

 

Different story from my dealership here in MN. They quoted book cost of $275 labor for the plugs, but another $61 per hole if a plug broke. I also asked about what would take place if they couldnt remove one and had to do the head work. Service advisor stated that I would then have to absorb that additional work if it happened. To say the least, I didnt agree and let her know that when the time came for the plug replacement work, Id be looking for an upfront agreement from the GM that if I was paying them that much to just change a simple spark plug, then they would have to take responsiblity for anything involving head removal. I wont be holding my breath when the time comes. (Continuing to call other shops now though to see if anyone else stands behind their work on this one vs passing the buck onto the consumer for a shoddy Ford design.)

 

Just had mine changed out today. I was VERY lucky. Every plug came out with little or no trouble. My total price was $321.15. That's still ridiculous in my opinion. I think I'll try and change them myself next time.

 

I would guess that all 5.4 have this problem! even the 2008 models. Does anyone know?

I have removed many broken plugs over the years. Never a fun job!
I hate to think I will be needing to handle this issue on my truck?

 

Can you tell us what year and how many miles you had before the replacement? Any actions taken in advance such as running a ton of Gumout through the tank to help clean out carbon deposits?

 

To be honest with you, I didn't do anything out of the norm. I was just over 90k when I changed them. I bought the truck used a few years ago, so I'm not even sure if the previous owner even had them changed. The best part was they were done in a single day. I dropped it off early in the morning and I was able to pick it up that evening. Most places wanted it over night to let it soak. I'm very impressed with the service I got from these guys. The thought of paying somebody to change my plugs makes me want to throw up however, I just didn't want to deal with a broken plug. I think next time I'm going to do it myself though. Hell for the price of the service, I could have had a new intake now