Christobal
Member
- Joined
- July 23, 2007
- Messages
- 45
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- SoCal
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 93 XLT, 03, 2 wheel drive
Just pulled the factory installed Motorcraft platinums. I was amazed at what I saw on the passenger side of the engine. The gap was large but the color, ground strap and electrode looked fine. When new, do these have the pointy cone on the tip of the electrode or are they cylindrical like most plugs?
However, on the right there was some light brown crusting on the ground strap and the electrodes were shorter, though the gap appeared about the same at .070-.080 est. There was slight moisture on the threads of the driver rear I believe to be fuel, but not certain. Condition worsened from front to rear driver side.
All plugs were relatively easy to break free, though strangely I noticed the driver sides were looser with the worst looking driver rear being the easiest to pull, felt too loose. To my knowledge these have never been touched since new.
Partly because of what I found I decided to wire brush and file the plugs and reinstall in the same hole they came out of.
The engine had developed an intermittent-occasional miss only noticeable in gear at idle (stopped), which was telling me something had run it's course. I changed the wires first and seemed to get a little improvement but not a cure. The condition of the worst plug and the moisture told me that was probably the only one actually 'missing'.
Filed back the ground strap and regapped them at .045 and reinstalled with anti-seize. The miss is completely gone so far, but I will be checking on at least the driver side middle and rear every 2-3 miles to see what's going on, if the moisture returns with no miss tells me we may have a coolant/oil related issue, though consumption is ridiculously low at something like 1qt/10k miles.
Decided to do an oil change put in Mobil1 5-30 high mileage, since it's had M1 5-30 in it since about 5K miles (first change). We'll see how things look, I did notice some fuel smell in the oil, hopefully just that one miss.
I'd like to put some of the factory or equivalent yellow coolant in it. Funny I wrote down the Ford spec for the Yellow long life coolant from the owner's manual. You get to the shelf at WalMart and all the long life stuff says it will work with any make/model, no spec whatsoever. On the other had, killing time, waiting for the oil change, I studied and wrote down the plethora of specs on the back of all the Mobil 1 varieties and Rotella T5 and T6.
I need to change the coolant.....to more long life stuff, which I see should be changed again at half the interval of the first or 50K. I hope I don't regret not doing this a while back....
However, on the right there was some light brown crusting on the ground strap and the electrodes were shorter, though the gap appeared about the same at .070-.080 est. There was slight moisture on the threads of the driver rear I believe to be fuel, but not certain. Condition worsened from front to rear driver side.
All plugs were relatively easy to break free, though strangely I noticed the driver sides were looser with the worst looking driver rear being the easiest to pull, felt too loose. To my knowledge these have never been touched since new.
Partly because of what I found I decided to wire brush and file the plugs and reinstall in the same hole they came out of.
The engine had developed an intermittent-occasional miss only noticeable in gear at idle (stopped), which was telling me something had run it's course. I changed the wires first and seemed to get a little improvement but not a cure. The condition of the worst plug and the moisture told me that was probably the only one actually 'missing'.
Filed back the ground strap and regapped them at .045 and reinstalled with anti-seize. The miss is completely gone so far, but I will be checking on at least the driver side middle and rear every 2-3 miles to see what's going on, if the moisture returns with no miss tells me we may have a coolant/oil related issue, though consumption is ridiculously low at something like 1qt/10k miles.
Decided to do an oil change put in Mobil1 5-30 high mileage, since it's had M1 5-30 in it since about 5K miles (first change). We'll see how things look, I did notice some fuel smell in the oil, hopefully just that one miss.
I'd like to put some of the factory or equivalent yellow coolant in it. Funny I wrote down the Ford spec for the Yellow long life coolant from the owner's manual. You get to the shelf at WalMart and all the long life stuff says it will work with any make/model, no spec whatsoever. On the other had, killing time, waiting for the oil change, I studied and wrote down the plethora of specs on the back of all the Mobil 1 varieties and Rotella T5 and T6.
I need to change the coolant.....to more long life stuff, which I see should be changed again at half the interval of the first or 50K. I hope I don't regret not doing this a while back....
