mosseater wrote:
OK, back in for the night and all 8 are changed, YAY! I have nine hours in it and still have to sew it back up and try it tomorrow.
I broke the very first one. Didn't know it till I took it out. I thought I was going to get it out, but no. Despite working it in and out a little (most who have experience will tell you not to over do it because galling the threads with dirt and ruining them is NOT a desirable outcome). It felt whole until I removed it. Luckily I was smart enough to choose an easy one to get at to be the first test case.
The Lisle tool to the rescue! This tool works, however, it's not fool-proof. They tell you the porcelain pusher used to make space for the puller thread cannot push the porcelain down into the cylinder, which appears to be true. The tool will bottom out before it pushes that far. However, the tool WILL push the porcelain tip far enough to break the electrode strap, which WILL chip the porcelain, and you know where those chips go! So, it turns out it's a visual and feel thing. It doesn't take much force to push the porcelain to the strap, so once you feel resistance while turning slowly with moderate pressure, and the pusher head is about 3/16" from bottoming out, stop turning and remove the pusher tool. This allows enough room for the puller to get about 1 1/2 threads purchase into the plug sleeve which is plenty to pull it out.
I ended up breaking three of the 8. After the first one, I had a sinking feeling I was going to break all 8 and decided to go big or go home. I pulled out the 3/8" impact (NOT a 1/2"!) and set the air just to the point where it was barely turning the plug, and just let it hammer until it broke free and backed out. In the final analysis, the three plugs that broke all had crusty, pasty, brown carbon the whole way up the sleeve, so my opinion is that they would have broken regardless of what method was used for removal. What I don't know is whether the ones I didn't use the gun on would have broken using hand tools. Tough to disprove the negative in any case.
I don't know whether doing the soaking over a few days and working them a little would have been enough to back them out whole or not. My sense of it is that it would take a long time for anything to wick down into the sleeve bore and soften the carbon. The ones I pulled out were mostly dry and they had all been soaking at least an hour before any real attempt at removal.
So, good news-bad news. They're done and the removal tool works. Bad news is it's STILL a travesty of automotive engineering and Ford isn't stepping up to the plate. Not surprised. The only remaining pucker factor in the job is starting it up and hoping a piece of porcelain doesn't do the unthinkable. Most everybody says it's not an issue, but the possibility is real. At the very least, it could score a cylinder and shorten the effective life of the engine even if it doesn't fail from a seizure or broken/bent valve. My guess is even in the unlikely event a piece does get caught in the valve seat, it'll likely break into dust and pass reletively harmlessly. Might get a burnt valve out of it, but catastrophic outcomes seem like a low likelyhood.
Epilogue tomorrow.
Glad it all worked out.
Hope you used a torque wrench to SET the plugs, if plugs not torqued to proper specs they will leak raw fuel (been there, done that).
Setting the plugs to hand feel only may or may not work.. Too light of torque you will get enough raw fuel that you WILL smell it in the cab but only when backing up... May not happen immediately either.
