That cylinder is an easy one to get to. I am the fleet mechanic at a commercial bakery with 17 Ford E350s, I’ve changed probably over a hundred of the coils and plugs along with installing a bunch of time sert rethreads after they blow out the spark plug. Always a great video. Take care and glad you’re feeling better. The dog house is actually easy to get out.
Gap was critical with points and regular coils, but with modern ignition systems they are well capable of firing the plugs to a point. Antiseize is good, but yes a thin film, not blobs, as the thread will remove it at the contact points, and the rest will fill the voids, which is what it is there to do, fill up gaps and not allow rust to form. I use a white Loctite anti seize on boats, and where you have corrosion problems, and it works well to keep things from sticking, even in sea water. Boaters that do not use it generally replace motors every 2 years, because they turn into solid blocks of corrosion. Aircraft you use a yellow anti seize compound, which is specifically for aluminium, but it is a very expensive product, and I used it by the gallon. Worked, only took 6 of us with sledgehammers to remove the leg strut from the housing, and it was slathered with that from the last change a decade or two before. No compound, and we would have had to drill out 600 rivets, and replace the entire strut housing, and rivet the new one in place. We did not want to take another month on that service though. 2 in stores though, from the 1970's, in steel containers and in lots of cosmoline. Old stuff was hard as cement though, but the new strut went in with lots of it after cleaning out the housing well.
On my older (79-84) GM vans I always left the seats in to save wear and tear on my knees. The earlier vans (up to 68) the hood was removed and the doghouse was welded in. I'm guessing this makes me an old dude.
You are an excellent mechanic! I enjoy watching your videos! Wish I had you to diagnose my 2011 Silverado shudder! Throwing parts at it now. They put a torque converter in it but did not solve the problem. Next is motor mounts. Hope that will solve it! Take care of yourself and your wife. You are in my prayers. Ken
Very nice video brother Kenny. Very educational. As always, great job. I use a tiny amount of anti-seize compound on the threads of new spark plugs too.
This video is very helpful because this is an everyday maintenance issue. It become expecially applicable when drivers let a vehicle degrade until there is more than one fault contributing to poor driveability. As for using anti-seize, one only has to hear the sob story of borrowing to pay for a cylinder head when they ignored the spark plug replacement long enough to have a spark plug snap off. Or better yet breaking seized wheel lugs along the freeway changing a flat.
Many years ago, 90s, I got a rather shocking lesson taught to me. Now at the time I had been a tech and at that time a shop owner. I figured I knew more than enough about sp plugs. I was on the side of changing sp plugs often. Anyway, I had a customer that drove long distances at least once or twice a week. At the beginning of him becoming a customer, we would do a service, including changing the spark plugs. Sooner than normal he would come back in for just new spark plugs. The plugs looked new but we replaced them anyway. Soon, he would be back in for new sp plugs. Then in for a service . Then repeat. Talked to the customer about this and he was one of those that really checked his mileage. Soon as his mileage started to drop off, new sp plugs. Mileage would go back up. So my lesson was that sp plug misfires occur faster than one would think considering the sp plugs coming out looked new with the gap still good. So any issues with complaints of mileage or driveability we would go directly to the sp plugs. They need to be replaced more often than one thinks. .
Always amazed at your talent in diagnosis and understanding what to do. I’m a little curious why Ford didn’t put in a transverse straight 6 and front wheel drive transmission for the Vans? I think having the straight 6 would be enough low end torque and by making it front wheel drive would be easier to drive in the snow.
When it comes to situations like this doesn't hurt to recommend some kind of fuel injection cleaner as it not only helps fuel injection systems but also inside cylinders and even catalytic converters. Now I always sold the 3 step professional types left the others for the occasional usage of the owners
My policy when changing coils is if the engine has high mileage, If one is bad, I change them all. The idea being they all have lots of wear and it is more likely for them to fail in the near future.
After 57 years as an auto tech, service manager, shop owner and instructor I always change the coils (with OEM coils only) and new OEM plugs if the vehicle has over 100,000 miles and the plugs are severely worn.
In my old Honda Prelude the coil was mounted on the inner fender. I guess the engineers were afraid that the heat and vibration would affect the coils. Now it is either planned obsolescence or overconfidence that they have put them directly on the top of the engine. Could have been that they thought spark plug wires were just too troublesome...
@@ross_ulbright7779 nowadays the engine ignition design is totally different in where each cylinder has it’s own coil muunted upon the plug so it is more due to differing technologies in engine design
Spark plugs on any vehicle that has the coil per cylinder, especially Fords, look for tiny pin holes and tan or dark pin size dots on the porcelain. Visually look at not only the tip part of the plugs but also the porcelain. Every vehicle that I have done with coil on spark plug usually has at least one or two showing signs of failure. Also with spark plugs that are bad in this way sometimes take out the coils because a bad spark plug that’s bad can cause the spark to return back into the coil on the secondary side.
I'm in the camp of replace all the coils if one is bad and they are all the same age. Less comebacks for "it's missing again, I thought you fixed it"...
Good morning Mr Kenny hope y'all are doing better today. Well it's a whopping 8 degrees here, and yesterday we got around 8to 12 inches of a powdered snow,high today of 20 degrees. Heatwave 😅
It’s kinda funny , yesterday I cleaned the snow off my 03 Town Car.. that hadn’t been running since November.. and it was misfiring .. check engine light.. came on then later turned into a flashlight light. Lol.. going to scan it in a bit.. years ago like 4 yrs. It had a cylinder 5 misfire.. also was winter time and had been sitting.
Ihave always put a skin of antisieze on the threads of the plugs too, just a smear applied with a Qtip. Having to remove one siezed spark plug that breaks off when you try to remove it will quickly teach you which is the worse of the 2 evils
Wouldn't you pull the engine belt off and check everything that's driven by the belt and check for bad bearings while you have the chance to do so (nothing was mentioned about it)? With that kind of mileage there's a chance the belt has been replaced but if the plugs were original, a lot of other stuff might be as well. I just learned years ago to pull the belt and inspect everything while you have access to it. Especially working on school vehicles and buses, you really want to do a lot of preventative maintenance.
Those frightened motors I like to wipe down the boots with WD40 which is water displacement 40 and use dialectic grease in the tip And around the ceiling service of the cylinder head Protip
Platinum and uridium plugs are pre gapped If you read installation manual on indie n Gk plugs They are pre gapped Always good luck make sure the plug hasn't been dropped and looks the same As the rest other than that Bobby's your uncle send him home get the factory OM plug for the specification you should be fine
Haven't seen the p 0 3 16 I always thought that was just A po 300 random misfire Ford better ideas? 2013 4.6 the 3 valve 4.6? or is that still a good ie Tyrant as like to call them motor with only 2 valves and somewhat screwed up spark there's sometimes Thank God for doesn't build airplanes. I hated those motors when they first came out in The late 90s early 2000s Quote over plug Trident motors now I kind of like them because they made a million of them and you can get a low mileage Motor from a wrecking yard for cheap diamond dozen. Then they made the 3 valve oh man. I do not work on those. In my opinion they are not worth fixing. Just like a 60 diesel not worth it. Spent too much time Learning about 60 power strokes and you have to be suspective every single component in the entire vehicle Customers never happy clog up my shop yet don't work on them Anymore