JimR
Elite Member
Ford Pickup = \"Found On Road Dead\"
My 1994 Ford F250 project pickup turned into a real disaster today. I was driving home from the city when all of a sudden the exhaust got real loud and the motor starting skipping. At least I thought it was the exhaust. So I pulled over and opened the hood to take a look. Two of the spark plugs had blown right out of the cylinder head on the right side. One still had the hex nut but no threads. The other was just the porcelain part. So I drove my 6 cylinder V-8 home with the loudest air compressor that I have ever heard. After I got home I tried to remove the bases still in the head. No way, they were not coming out. I also tried to remove the other 2 plugs on this side. They broke right off at the threads leaving me with 4 broken plugs in one head. The plugs on the left head came out without too much difficulty. I did make a call to the previous owner to see when he changed these last. He claimed they were changed around 40-50K. Well the truck only has 90K on it. Rather than try to drill and tap out the remaining threads I decided to pull the motor apart and yank the head off. I didn't like the idea of all that metal floating around in the cylinders. What a mistake this was. I broke off 3 of the 4 corner intake manifold bolts. They snapped off right at the cylinder head nice and clean. The other corner bolt rounded off and I couldn't get it out even with forcing a smaller socket onto it. So I drilled the head of the bolt and knocked it off with a chisel. So now the intake manifold is off. The left side valve cover bolts were all rotted. One broke clean off and another could not be removed. I ended up ripping the valve cover off. No biggy as it was pretty well rusted also and needed to be replaced anyway. All of the exhaust bolts needed to be cut off with a torch. None of them could have been removed as there was no head to put a socket onto. All the external 11/16 hex head headbolts were removed using a 9/16 socket hammered over the rust. This is a ------ shame that Ford is making rust buckets. This is the last time I ever spend my money on a used Ford pickup. A trip to the dealer confirmed that they are having a rash of rusted out valve covers, oil pans, exhaust manifolds rotting and cracking, exhaust bolts rotting off, the A.I.R. pipes rotting off, spark plug shields rotting out, egr pipe rotting off, front and rear spring shackles rotting off and who knows what else. The parts guy was pretty good about telling me all of this. Looks to me like "Ford Built Tough Trucks" means sell it before it gets old or before it has too many miles on it. What really amazed me was that Ford had all of these parts in stock. There must be a high turnaround on these items. Otherwise they would not stock these parts. Out of all the used vehicles my wife and I have owned over the years, none of them have ever been rotted out as bad as this pickup engine is. Here's the four spark plugs out of the left head. Ford, Shame on you. The spark plugs were made by Champion.
My 1994 Ford F250 project pickup turned into a real disaster today. I was driving home from the city when all of a sudden the exhaust got real loud and the motor starting skipping. At least I thought it was the exhaust. So I pulled over and opened the hood to take a look. Two of the spark plugs had blown right out of the cylinder head on the right side. One still had the hex nut but no threads. The other was just the porcelain part. So I drove my 6 cylinder V-8 home with the loudest air compressor that I have ever heard. After I got home I tried to remove the bases still in the head. No way, they were not coming out. I also tried to remove the other 2 plugs on this side. They broke right off at the threads leaving me with 4 broken plugs in one head. The plugs on the left head came out without too much difficulty. I did make a call to the previous owner to see when he changed these last. He claimed they were changed around 40-50K. Well the truck only has 90K on it. Rather than try to drill and tap out the remaining threads I decided to pull the motor apart and yank the head off. I didn't like the idea of all that metal floating around in the cylinders. What a mistake this was. I broke off 3 of the 4 corner intake manifold bolts. They snapped off right at the cylinder head nice and clean. The other corner bolt rounded off and I couldn't get it out even with forcing a smaller socket onto it. So I drilled the head of the bolt and knocked it off with a chisel. So now the intake manifold is off. The left side valve cover bolts were all rotted. One broke clean off and another could not be removed. I ended up ripping the valve cover off. No biggy as it was pretty well rusted also and needed to be replaced anyway. All of the exhaust bolts needed to be cut off with a torch. None of them could have been removed as there was no head to put a socket onto. All the external 11/16 hex head headbolts were removed using a 9/16 socket hammered over the rust. This is a ------ shame that Ford is making rust buckets. This is the last time I ever spend my money on a used Ford pickup. A trip to the dealer confirmed that they are having a rash of rusted out valve covers, oil pans, exhaust manifolds rotting and cracking, exhaust bolts rotting off, the A.I.R. pipes rotting off, spark plug shields rotting out, egr pipe rotting off, front and rear spring shackles rotting off and who knows what else. The parts guy was pretty good about telling me all of this. Looks to me like "Ford Built Tough Trucks" means sell it before it gets old or before it has too many miles on it. What really amazed me was that Ford had all of these parts in stock. There must be a high turnaround on these items. Otherwise they would not stock these parts. Out of all the used vehicles my wife and I have owned over the years, none of them have ever been rotted out as bad as this pickup engine is. Here's the four spark plugs out of the left head. Ford, Shame on you. The spark plugs were made by Champion.
