houtex

Ok, time for me to tell story, as they say in Hawai'i. Gather 'round, childrens, sit on down, get comfy, as Unca houtex is gonna spin tales, yeah.

Awesome has been feeling a little ill lately. Like I have all freakin' April. But that's another giant post elsewhere. Awesome had been hesistating on the start, and below 2000 RPM when trying to bump the cruise control up a couple of MPH. Also, her 'Check Charging System' thing would come on in the cold (<60 DegF?) weather. And I knew her terminals were again messed up, no matter that I'd just cleaned them. Ugh. Ok, honey, I get the message. Time to get stuff done.

So, today was the day. I had slated this day, Sunday, May 5, 2013, Cinco de Mayo, the day after Star Wars Day (May 4th, aka May the Fourth be with you!) to install new spark plugs in, and deal with the battery area of, Awesome.

Now, Awesome has the 4.6L 3V motor in it with those pesky 2 piece plugs in her. Black booted coil packs. Yep. Gunna be fun.

During the past couple of days, I gathered everything I needed. Battery cleaner, for one. I also got a new terminal clamp, because hers was lookin' pretty bad on the left side, but more on the battery later.

Got 8 plugs, dielectric grease, a giant (for what it'll be for) 8 oz tub of 2400 degF nickel anti-sieze, a thin wall 9/16 spark plug wrench (as I didn't have one) and indeed, there was a Lisle 65600 Spark Plug Extractor Tool acquired.

Read the TSB, watched videos, armed myself with lots and lots of knowledge, including conflicting reports of whether to have the engine warm, cold, loosen the plugs then start it, rev it once, shut it off, then pull the plugs, how much carb cleaner, which carb cleaner, is PBBlaster any good...

Ow. My head hurts.

So, I said "Screw it. TSB is the way to go, and I'm done with this noise."

Parked her on Saturday, lifted the hood up, closed the garage, and this morning, at 9am, I started.

I took the coil packs off, and kept them in the order of their removal... 1, 2, etc. I took my new plug socket, and set my 1/2" torque wrench to 33 lb-ft of torque as specified to NOT go past... and that wasn't enough to break them 1/8 a turn as required.

Oh. Ok... Got my small 1/2" breaking bar (because I ain't using Aminal, the big 1/2" breaker, on this) The reasoning was this: That is the back and forth torque, not the break it loose torque, maybe. All I got.

So I broke them loose, 1/8 turn ONLY. And felt pretty good about things. I blew them out, scraped with a screw driver, then blew them out some more until I was pretty sure there wasn't crud in the plug holes. I then attempted to spray the B-12 carb cleaner I had... and it won't work sideways. Crap. Half a second of "maybe I'll use the PBBLaster..." then said, "nope, it says nothing about carbon." I figured out I could bend the straw, and got the correct amount in each tub. Ok, time to wait on that soaking.

Now it's... maybe 10:30am. Now attack the battery. Whee!

A battery, somewhere, somehow, has been leaking acid, but I'm pretty sure it's a previous battery or something. Whatever, the firewall is ugly. The positive terminals are just UGLY with corrosion. The entire area there is a *mess*, all the way down the firewall and on the frame rail.

I'm not terribly happy about that. I pull the terminals off, wrap them up so they're isolated. I then pull the battery out. And finally, I actually remove the battery tray. NONE of the fasteners are happy campers about what I'm asking them to do, which is *let the heck go already*.

Nice. Real not happy about the battery stuff now. And really, it just seems prudent to not wait. I spray the battery cleaner/acid converter all over the firewall and battery area, scrub, rinse, repeat, three or four times. All clean. Ugly, rusty, but clean. Grr.

Battery is also shot and rinsed a couple times. No more pink. Terminals.. Ugh. I get a bucket of water (which I swapped out three times) and a sacrificial towel, put it in the battery area, and go to work.

About two hours later... positive terminals/leads are all coppery and cleaned up, well, as much as they can be. I did my very best. I'm hoping it's good enough. We shall see.

With the battery acidity thing taken care off, now it's finally time to get back to the plugs. Off I go. Hm. There's no more carb cleaner in it. Now, carb cleaner, I know, evaporates on it's own. So just to be sure, I squirt in the holes a little PBBLaster just in case.I do the left side, front to back. One at a time, back and forth with the torque wrench set to 33 lb-ft, taking my freaking time. A little extra 'out' here and there, but back and forth, back and forth...

They all eventually, on the left side, got loose enough that I didn't need the big torque wrench. At that point, I DID NOT take them out. I left them in the left side, but I wicked out the remaining PBBlaster. I was hopeful that I did not leave any liquid in the engine cylinder itself this way.

Now the right side... front to back... same deal... going good... hm. This number 8 cylinder feels funny. I have a bad feeling about this...

But they get to that same point of not needing big wrench, and I wick out the PBBlaster.

Proceed back to the left side. Take out each plug... all one piece! WHEE!
Immediately put in the nickeled up new plugs as I took them out. No sense chancing something dropping in the hole.

So the left side is now replugged and hand tightened. I apply the torque wrench to 25 lb-ft, and tighten each one. Left side is now ready for coils!

Now, back to the right.... Yep, that #8 broke off. Le sigh.

Get the other three swapped out, and then attack #8. At first, I thought I pushed that ceramic in, but no... the extractor bit would not bite. Hm. Put the pusher back in...crackling... hell naw, back it out...dangit. Tiny slivers of ceramic in there. Frack me.

I think... I ponder... I spray a little PB Blaster, wait a minute, then put the pusher back in... ah... there we go... moving... moving... crackle... that's enough, I guess.

Look back in it.. AH.. There we go. And now I know how THAT tool works. Seems as if it pulled out all of the ceramic. Lovely tool. Put the extractor in, works like a freakin' charm. Pulls that puppy out without any issue. Lisle tool is NICE. I have it, probably won't use it again, but I'm glad I have it.

Put 8 back together, put all the coils back in with dielectric grease in the boots, and bolt those down with regular anti-sieze on the bolts. Plugs are DONE!... now we see if I hydrolocked the engine or there's ceramic in the 8 cylinder...

But first, gotta paint the battery area. I decided that I am gonna paint it semi-gloss black. I am eventually going to do that to the whole engine bay when (and yeah, I know it's when, it's mechanical. It will happen, just not terribly soon, I hope!) Awesome's engine has to be taken out. So I'll just start here. Black'll be easier to repaint anyway.

Scrub it with the red scotchbrite, find a decent breakpoint on the firewall, tape off all the bits I don't want painted... And I used BBQ paint. It's a fantastic semi-gloss black, turns out, a little less glossy than some, but it's also a primer paint, and where it's going... it'll be JUST fine.

Got that done. Put in the now cleaned and de-acided battery tray, coated the three bolts with BBQ paint on the heads, and anti-sieze on the threads, and bolted that thing down.

Plopped the battery in. Bolted it down with the hold down, anti-sieze on it's threads too.

Cut down the posts to new metal. Scrape cleaned out the terminals one more time. Applied dielectric grease to the terminal bottoms, slapped them on. Once tightened down, applied the red battery terminal spray (with overspray protection in place, natch) so as to hopefully, even though it didn't work last time, this time, it won't corrode again. *crosses fingers*

Aaand... looking it over... Yep. Awesome is ready to rock, I guess.

Gingerly, after washing my hands for the 328th time, I got in the car, and said "here we go, baby...", pushed in the clutch, turned the key, waited for the dinging to stop... start...

weird hiccup...

Vroom!

SHE LIVES!!!!!

I am dang proud of myself! Extract her from the garage. Turn her off. Clean up garage a bit. Go wash hands for the 329th time. Get in Awesome, turn her key.. VROOM!

Went for a 10 mile drive to reset her brains. All the hesitation is gone! She drives like she has for the past 5 years until this recent hesitation started.

And here I was thinking her 95,500 mile clutch was slipping. As if.

Oh, yeah, I didn't mention the mileage? Yep. 95.5K, and only one broken plug. I'd say that's pretty nifty stuff myself.

Total time: 8 hours. Yes. It was a lot of dang work. And I hurt, becuse, frankly, my back is not a happy camper about all that weird bending...

But I'm happy, as I did it myself, and I've learned new things, and best of all... Awesome is happy.

Ok, childrens, story time over. Hope you enjoyed it. I know I did!

Sabre

Enjoyed the story!

Nice results....and especially since you have that great feeling of personal accomplishment that is hard to beat!

houtex

Indeed so, and glad you liked it. I do carry on...

The part where that #8 came out sans tip was a little bit panicky for me... I was very very close to shutting it down in a mental funk, but... decided 'frack it then. I'll try until I have ceramic shards in the cylinder I guess, and then I suppose I'll tow her to the shop and have that head taken out... so... DO IT.'

I'm glad I didn't shut down, honest. It was a little closer than I'd like on that.

Victorfriessen

Haha awsome you got the right part replaced,the frustrating part comes when you start replacing things like removing front bumper to get to the intercooler parts and sensors wich are expensive and all that it does is nothing and at the end you couldve just began with changin the spark plugs, happened to me so I know what got thru but as you said you always learn new things and you get to know your car so much better

Nemisus

Nice work bringing this back to life. In the end you'll know your car better than anyway. It sucks it wasn't treated very well but it is definitely in the right hands.

Cheers

Nem

m05fastbackGT

Joseph! just be for warned your going to get messed with by the OP for resurrecting his 9 year old thread

Nemisus

WTH?

This might be a first... The reply you see was intended for a post by VGMstudies and his newly acquired V8. Post I was reading when I replied is https://themustangsource.com/forums/...ustang-549189/

Let me have it Houtex! I wont have any idea what you're talking about but it'll be fun

Have NO FN clue how it made it here... ?!

got a laugh out of it though.

VGMStudios

Haha this is a first. Mistakes happen. I'll reply to you in my thread.

m05fastbackGT

I was also caught way off guard as well Joseph, until realizing you intended to respond on VGM's thread.. Anyhow, can't quite figure out how that happened either lol.

It's most definitely a first, as I honestly don't recall seeing something like that before to my knowledge lol.

Nemisus

it just dawned on me what most likely happened...

I was at the end of VGM's post and scrolled just far enough down to make my reply and went into Houtex's post listed as "related thread".

m05fastbackGT

This would appear to make the most sense Joseph, as I'll often end up into a "related thread" unintentionally whenever scrolling down.. At any rate, It can at times be very annoying to say the very least

shaneyusa

Boy was I confused. Saw the reply in the other thread and was trying to figure out where the @Nemisus entry came from. Thought maybe the site was flaking out. Guess it is... Boy can't wait for @houtex's response...