I found out that if your plugs are going to break, they are going to break. My truck is an 2006 FX4 and has 95,000 miles on it so I gave myself a whole day to do this job and I am glad I did. Started at 8:30 and finished at 5:30. Let my plugs sit in Aerokroil, gave them a quarter turn and let them sit longer. All that did was waste time. 6 out of the 8 broke . Thank god I had the Lisle 65600 tool ready and waiting. That tool was worth every penny and seemed to work better with use. The only glorifying thing to come out of this was the truck started, ran and idoled alot smoother on the first turn. I used autolight ht15 plugs ($12.99 a piece) from Autozone and reused the cops. The only advice that I would give, is the removal of the battery, computer and computer mount. Gives you alot of needed room. Also, have swivals, extentions and a cooler full of cold beverages ready. I gave my dad the warning and told him to get on his with only 50,000 miles on it before it gets as bad as mine. If anybody is looking to take on this challenge, don't be afraid to give me a holler. Thanks to all the guys that leave posts on this site. It is an extreme help.

 

Glad you're finisehed with that. I did mine at 80,000 miles and didn't break one. I ran the top cleaner through it first and let it set a day. Then warmed it up a little and took them out.

 

KWJS12 - good work! hey I'm doing mine soon and I have a question, if the actual porcelin breaks and you have to extract it, I watched an online documentary where they glue a rod inside where the electrode was and after the glue dries they have a seperate tool for that extraction. Then after that, you would tap and remove the electrode outter casing. Did you have any plugs that broke in this manor? I've heard other stories that you can push the porcelin down enough to bite enough threads and do it that way but that sounds risky in that shards may fall in the chamber. Thanks!

john

 

The tool that KWJS12 used is better. You don't glue anything. It pushes the porcelin in enough to get the other part of the tool to pull the whole thing out.

 

This is the kind of story that just makes me want to avoid doing it myself but paying the dealer $500 plus additional fees if one is broken leaves me with no option but just doing it! Anyone in the Portland OR area want to lend me the extraction tool?

 

im happy to say i did mine at 80000k and none broke and i used pb blaster n let them sit for bout 15 to 30 min each and just took my time took me like 6 hours to do.

 

Yes I did. I had 4 plugs that broke the porcelin, 2 that the threads just come out and 2 that came out in one piece. When the porcelin breaks, it just takes a little longer to remove. The tool I used (lisle) comes with a porcelin pusher that will push the porcelin down further into the electro shield to make room to make a tap. When the porcelin is down far enough, you remove that tool and use the tapper to pull the shield out. The tool that needs gluing is the Rotunda tool that your Ford dealership would actually use. With that tool, you need to glue the porcelin and wait 6 hours before working on it. I think that is a waste of time and the main reason I went with the Lisle(65600). That tool lasted long enough for me to remove 6 plugs and I would recommend it to anybody that asks. If I would've brought my truck into Ford, it would've been $360 for the change plus $100 for every plug that broke. $1000 for a plug change is fing retarded. I did it for $170.

 

In reading the many, many, and even more many posts on the spark plug breakage, it has been reported that they break because of carbon buildup on the thread tips, causing the plug to bind as they are removed.

Those of you that got them out without breakage, what fuel (brand) did you run? Those who had them break, what fuel (brand) did you run?

Makes me wonder if certain gas brands allow for more carbon buildup in the cylinders (and spark plug tips) than other brands.

 

I wonder if there is any correlation to spark plug changes where sea foam was recently used....

 

If I go to a gas station they tend to be Speedways. That's what a majority of them are in Milwaukee.