$500.00 to change spark plugs?

[BobT]

A friend of mine has a 2005 Ford F150 with 110K miles on it. He inquired about replacing the spark plugs and was surprised to hear the estimated price of $500.00. Supposedly, there is an issue with the plugs seizing and snapping off when you try to remove them so then you have to work to get the broken part out of the head.

Is $500.00 correct or does that sound a little high?

Thanks,

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

Ha. $500 to change those plugs is LOW. I've heard stories of $1500+ for ones that have plugs seized in the head. This is a very common, well-known problem on the 04-05 F150.

[Finlander]

Remember: Friends don't let friends drive Fords!

[Jeremy airjer W]

I just did a tune-up on a Camry. $200 just for the plugs. Then there was labor to pull the plenum, gaskets, etc. It adds up fast. I was talking to my brother the Friday before opener and he had one that the threads came out with the plug. He said those ones get a head. The older ones they can heli-coil.

[Scott K]

Bob, this is the engine that has problems with the plugs breaking off, but dont let them quote you for them breaking off, before they actually do. If they have the correct tool, if a plug breaks off, it shouldnt take more then 10 minutes per broken plug to remove the broken plug.

[jwmiller33]

what is the year range on f150s that have this problem?

[Scott K]

04-06 with the factory plugs. Once the new plugs are put in, they are a lot better. Instead of breaking off 3 of the 8, its more like 1 out of 24.

[LMITOUT]

A guy I work with just went through the same ordeal with his '06. I don't recall how many he said broke off but the shop had to use the "special tool" to do the job. They also replaced the coil packs and the bill was north of $1200 by the time it was all said and done.

[Scott K]

There are several tool kits made to remove the broken plugs, one stands out and is the best one for the job, and is also fairy cheap. It is made by Lysle tools, and runs about $85. Being a Ford guy, I have replaced many spark plugs on the 5.4 3 valve engine, and have broken off a lot, I would guess over 100. Since I have bought the tool kit from Lysle, I have yet have one that I couldnt get out within 10 minutes. If someone is charging people that much to remove the broken spark plugs, they are either way over charging and taking advantage of the customers, or they dont know what they are doing, and havent bought the correct kit. I get a couple calls a week, because shops pull the heads to remove the bottom part of the spark plug, and they mess up on the timing, when reassembling the engine. When all they needed to do is spend $85, and add 10 minutes per broken plug to the labor, or 30 minutes, just to make a little time on it. $500 is reasonable for a metro shop, $1200+ is robbery!

I am sure all the coil packs werent needed, unless he chose to wash his engine, which kills Ford coil packs. If you bought the coil packs from a dealer, they run close to $100 each, so there is about $800 of that $1200 quote.

Just looked it up, coil packs each from Ford $74.07x8= $592.56, labor for plugs, 1.8x$100= $180 hours. Spark plugs, $7.50x8=$60 each, a total of $832.56. That means they charged about $400 to remove broken plugs.

[Jeremy airjer W]

I have the lisle kit!

[LMITOUT]

The truck was misfiring so there was some troubleshooting time involved as well. At first they said that one of the cylinders was misfiring so they replaced that coil pack and then after that it showed more cylinders misfiring. I'm not sure how that happens???? At that point they (the shop and truck owner) decided to replace them all (coil packs and spark plugs). I thought it was strange as well. I don't recall what he said they quoted him on the coil pack cost.

[Scott K]

I have the lisle kit!

You ever have any problem getting out a broken plug with it?

[Scott K]

The truck was misfiring so there was some troubleshooting time involved as well. At first they said that one of the cylinders was misfiring so they replaced that coil pack and then after that it showed more cylinders misfiring. I'm not sure how that happens???? At that point they (the shop and truck owner) decided to replace them all (coil packs and spark plugs). I thought it was strange as well. I don't recall what he said they quoted him on the coil pack cost.

I was going to add something for diag, but just ran the numbers without. If the engine was washed, I could justify the 8 coils. Replacing all new, covers the shops butt, and gives the customer the piece of mind that its fixed right. So I do understand the recommendation.

[LMITOUT]

The part that I don't understand, and maybe you can shed some light on this, is how does it go from one cylinder misfiring to all of them? If I recall the first thing they did was to swap the bad coil pack with another cylinder to see if the problem moved. That seemed like a logical first step in troubleshooting the problem, but then the diagnostics showed all of the cylinders misfiring?

I think they then changed out the spark plugs to eliminate that as a problem in their troubleshooting of the misfire condition, but when that didn't solve the problem the next step was to replace all the coil packs.

Maybe they washed the engine to do the work and that smoked the rest of the coil packs!

[Jeremy airjer W]

You ever have any problem getting out a broken plug with it?

Havent had to yet!

[Scott K]

I would guess, it had maybe 2 bad coils, that didnt miss at the same time. After finding one bad one, by swapping it out to a different cyl, they determined that replacing the one cop will fix it. Then after doing that, the other bad coil pack started to miss more. Sometimes the cyl missfiring will sometimes show up as a different cyl then it actually is missfiring. It may show up as the cyl before, or after the actual bad one in the firing order.

For an example, say the firing order 13726548 which is for the 5.4 3 valve engine, has 2 cyl intermittently missfiring. Lets say 7&4, number 7 being the worst, and the one that was found first. Then #4 was also missfiring, but was sometimes showing up as 5,4,8. Since the missfire is determined by timing how long it takes the crankshaft to rotate 360 degrees. The computer divides the 360 degrees by 8, and figures out which 1/8 of the rotation took longer, to figure out which cyl was creating the miss. Sometimes the actual cyl that is missfiring, will drag down the cyl before, and look like it is the one before the miss, sometimes after. Each of the 8 cyl is dedicated a 45 degree slot of the crankshaft rotation. When there are more then one cyl missfiring, it can throw the speed of the rotation off, as when the engine is slowed from the miss, the other cyl need to make up for it, by speeding up, and may create a confusing scenario, even for the computer.

LOL, did I make that complicated enough?

[LMITOUT]

Gotcha. Thanks!

Thats an expensive bill to swallow.

[Jeremy airjer W]

I understood it

[swamptiger]

I think I'm in the wrong business....