Help me read these plugs

[markNtennessee]

these are the plugs i took out of my 2001 expy 5.4. the bottom row of plugs are the passenger side.




click on the picture to get a larger view
Also these plugs have only been in the truck for about a year.

The plugs changed helped a little in the performance in the truck, but didnt do anything for the rough idle.

 

[ssbroly]

There's a couple symptoms I'm seein there. How was the engine running? Hard start, rough idle? A couple plugs look like they may have been the wrong heat range, or they were in there way too long. I'd put new coils in if you haven't since you've owned it. Check your air filter, too. Dirty air filters will junk plugs up.

 

[joezek]

-First thing I noticed is 5 of the plugs look like they're getting combustion blown up into the threads....maybe not torqued tight enough.
-The two top right look like they may have an injector problem from the dark soot shadow on the ceramic.
-Some of them look like they were too hot (bottom row) like the wrong heat range?
-The gap looks huge, I think .054 is required.
-They all look like the fuel has a lot of additive leaving behind a gray coating.

I'd say install a new set and make sure to use anti-seize and torque properly with a torque wrench. Make sure you don't get any anti-seize on the tip, it will short out.

I might also recommend either replacing the injectors with a nice "Flow matched" set or have them pressure cleaned. Pressure cleaning on the vehicle is hooking a pressured can of injector cleaner to the fuel rail and disconnecting the fuel pump. The truck runs directly off the pressurized can for about 10 minutes. 3M makes a kit, BG makes a kit, and I decided to make my own kit for $15 instead of the $300+ kit. I used an old R-12 freon can tap, the kind that punctures the side of the can. I bought a fuel pressure test kit for $8 at Harbor Freight because it had the Ford fuel rail hose adapter. The R-12 tap can be found usually on ebay used. The can of injector cleaner is $20 for 3M at Bennett auto, or $12 for NAPA brand.

 

[markNtennessee]

the truck has a slight miss at idle and lacks some low range power.
I have installed a new set of plugs in the truck. and i checked the gap on the old plugs and they are gapped at .054. and they were torqued to 28 ft lbs.

The additive may be from the seafoam that i have used on the truck several times, i ran a can in the fuel and a half a can in the vacuum line. i done this a couple of time in the last several months.

 

[joezek]

Have you changed the fuel filter yet? How old are the O2 sensors? What brand and type of plugs are those? Are they definitely the proper heat range?

Just about every vehicle I've owned, I tried at least once installing platinum plugs because a new style had come out. Every time I installed platinum plugs the car suddenly had a slight miss at idle- just enough to annoy the crap out of me because you can feel the vibration of the engine at idle. So EVERY time I ended up removing the platinums and replacing with standard cheap copper plugs and instantly the idle was smooth as glass. I can honestly say I tried and was hopeful that each newer platinum design would be better, and maybe they last longer each new design, but they don't idle as smooth as a copper plug. Platinum is just about the worst conductor of electricity so your going to have some random misfires. Maybe some people can't feel it, but it's there. The problem with copper is they don't last long and our engines are a pain in the ass to change the plugs.

A lot of people on this forum swear by the Motorcraft stock platinum plugs. They say those are the only ones that run properly. I looked at some and found that they're copper core with a platinum and nickel tip. A little bit of everything in them.

I've tried Seafoam and didn't see any difference in performance. I think I tried to convince myself it was more powerful etc. but in the end it really didn't run any better. My best improvements were found using the Chevron Techron "Concentrate". It's like $15 for a bottle that treats around 20 gallons I think. I used it on a road trip because our explorer suddenly was a little weak/rough idle/low mpg. But besides that, I only trust pressure cleaning the injectors, or removing them and sending them to a professional shop that cleans and flow matches them. Dirty injectors will make your plugs look the way they do. You get one misfire and the O2 sensor leans the whole engine out because the unburned fuel from the misfire screws up the O2 sensor reading- then the plugs are mostly lean except for the one that is misfiring.

 

[ssbroly]

Man I love this website. Learn something new everyday.