needsmoarturbo

Well so my 04 lariat 5.4 was running great. Then past weekend I had it apart to replace the AC compressor and while I had the fan and shroud out I thought I'd get out my pressure washer and wash off the front of the engine and underneath, etc. I tried to avoid any electrical areas and I've done this on other vehicles with no problem.
last night I get it all back together and hook the battery back up the start it up to charge the ac. Well it started up but was idling really rough and I kept thinking it was gonna die.
So I think ok maybe it just needs to relearn the throttle position since I had the battery unhooked, so I go ahead and let it warm up and I charge the ac and the whole time it sounds like crap and the exhaust is pretty stinky. So I unhook the battery again after the truck is warmed up and do the battery relearn and it's still running like crap.
If I give it some rpms it will smooth out a bit but it still acts like a misfire or multiple misfires.
So I cleaned the throttle body and the maf today using the correct cleaners for each and try it again, and still really rough like misfires.

So any ideas? I don't think much of any water could have got past the coil boots but I tried to scan for misfires using torque pro and I don't know if you can monitor this on an 04? I am not very experienced in torque so any pointers would be great.
I was hoping to take it camping next weekend with nice cold ac. The ac is great now, but runs like poop. Any and all ideas appreciated.
i didn't have any codes except a p0171 I think and I'm not sure if that came back after I cleaned maf or not.

Apdl

Water in the spark plug wells

needsmoarturbo

Thanks for the input. I did take out the number 1 and number 5 coils and they looked dry and had plenty of dielectric grease down in the bottom of the boot.
so I'm not ruling it out but those two were ok. I did try to avoid getting any water up on top of the engine.
Arf. No good deed goes unpunished.
I guess I'll pull the other easy ones and have a look.

needsmoarturbo

Thanks for the input. I did take out the number 1 and number 5 coils and they looked dry and had plenty of dielectric grease down in the bottom of the boot.
so I'm not ruling it out but those two were ok. I did try to avoid getting any water up on top of the engine.
Arf. No good deed goes unpunished.
I guess I'll pull the other easy ones and have a look.

needsmoarturbo

So is there any way to scan for misfires if there's no error codes?I'd like to narrow it down if I can, but otherwise I guess I'll go start with the way ones first and hope I can find it the old fashioned way.

laterongc

It can take a bit for the code to show up. So if you haven’t gotten it out and driven it yet; that’s what you might want to do.

Although id you suspect water, you may want to just take time to vac (or blow) out all the wells anyway.

needsmoarturbo

So after I got my kids to bed I went back out and pulled all the rest of the coils except #4 and they were all dry except #6. So I blew them all out anyway and put some fresh grease in the end of the boots and called that good for now. Started it up and it did seem to be better, but maybe it's still relearning because it was still a bit rough at idle.
This truck is new to me but ran great before whatever happened this weekend. Since I wasn't sure what was in it I pulled one plug just to see autolite ht15s? I don't suppose they are as good as motorcrafts, but they looked ok condition so I put back in for now.

needsmoarturbo

Update. I had to take the number 6 cop out again the next day it was still misfiring badly. After leaving it out with a warm engine for several hours it seemed pretty much back to running normal this morning. Thank God.

Next to address after the camping trip is try to measure oil pressure. I have the famous hot idle passenger side phaser knock that sounds like a diesel underneath by the bell housing. I'd like to put this off for a while if it's not doing any harm to the engine. In the meantime I might try some slightly thicker oil to help out the pressure after the engine is warm.

Darrenh66

Lucas makes an additive designed for vtc engine’s. Tried it in my 04 5.4 XLT and it seemed to help.

needsmoarturbo

Thanks for your Input. I haven't changed the oil since I got it because it looks nice and fresh, but I can't see how that could hurt.
I will definitely go the synthetic 5w30 route on the next change though, but I was looking up data sheets and Pennzoil euro 0w40 has almost the same cold flow as the motorcraft 5w20 and but is thicker when fully hot so If the 5w30 doesn't do the trick I might try that.