Excursion - Too many miles?

vjstangelo wrote:
Thanks for the good advice. I was planning on bringing to my mechanic to give it the once over, change belts, hoses. Also was planning to have the transmission serviced.

What about the plugs? They are stock but no issues. I was going to have them changed. Should I also have the COP's replaced? Do they have a suggested life?

The COP's are VERY reliable. They typically don't fail.. what usually fails is the boots and springs.. You can source 10 COP boots and springs on Ebay for about $20.00. I did this myself because I had a miss I just couldn't isolate. The Boots came and I planned a weekend swap.. (the V10 is VERY easy to work on)

here is a pic of my bag-o-COP boot's and springs



So the day came for my COP boot replacement and thankfully when I removed the COP's I figured out why I had an intermediate miss that I had ZERO success isolating myself.



Yes.. that is a CRACK in the body of the COP. I found that 6 of these bad boys had identical cracks.

Well, at least I had some spare COP boots now.

I broke down and ordered 10 new COP's from an eBay company called UneekSupply.com. I didn't have $600-$800 for New Motocraft COP's and several users on FTE were running these COP's with great success. I got these coils for about $90.00 for all 10 and I kept the other 4 coils without cracks as backups.

Add me to that list of happy uneeksupply coil customers.. These coils are great! They immediately cured my miss and ran GREAT in my truck with NGK spark plugs, and as far as I know they are in commercial service with the company that bought my dually from me to this day.

Here is what UneekSupply's COP's look like



If you find yourself replacing coils.. no matter what the company is you buy your coils from.. make sure that you pull the boot off and make sure that the spring is seated INSIDE the COP.

Here is a pic of what you will be looking at.. Never-mind the crappy Accell coil (hard $65.00 lesson there) but it does show good contrast. This is looking at the BOTTOM of the COP where the spring and boot will attach.



You will be pulling the OLD spring off of this little copper stud (not sure of the technical name) You will basically destroy the old springs getting them off.. make sure you have replacements on hand. You can replace the boots with local auto parts store boots and springs but they are going to run you about 60-70$ from the parts store.. EBAY's are just as good and cost $20.00 ish for me.

Also, I used some dielectric grease in the bottom of the new coil boots.. this helps seal out the spark plug from water that may get down in the spark plug well.

Anyway, sorry for the long reply. I hope you find something useful here.

Thanks!

Jeremiah