classicmuscle442

My f250 blew the ceramic piece out of a 460, never seen before, had a he!! of a time getting base out. After week of soaking with rust buster got it out with impact, had tighten and loosen and finally . Thought I was going to have to pull head. Low mileage but rust took over,

classicmuscle442

Why was post moved? ok not olds, understood

Fun71

I had the same thing happen on a 1986 Ford Thunderbird with fairly new (non-rusted) Autolite spark plugs. The metal base split around the perimeter right below the hex portion and the ceramic popped right out and was hanging by the plug wire. I had to use a HUGE easy out to get the threaded section out of the head. Never used Autolite plugs after that.

classicmuscle442

They were Autolit! in mine two, never heard of this before, must be Chinese steel. Ceramic was hanging from spark plug wire.

Fun71

My incident was back in around 1990-1994, so I don't know if they were made of chinesium back then or not, but apparently whatever material they were made of wasn't the best quality. After that I switched to Champion plugs and have been happy with them.

rustyroger

European Ford Fiesta with Spanish built ohv engines were notorious for this, 14mm taper seat plugs that were all too often overtightened. It was worse on later models with longer plug change intervals which allowed corrosion to build up for longer.
It didn't make much difference which plugs were fitted, ham fisted mechanics were normally the problem.

Roger.

classicmuscle442

Trying to understand how a plug that was "overtightened" would cause the ceramic piece to blow out. Sure it would be hard to remove but to separate?

gs72

IMO I would only use motorcraft plugs in Ford products. That's what the factory installs. I wouldn't use champion in a lawn mower (have had bad experiences).
Make sure the right reach plugs are installed. Have seen plenty of 460 Fords that had long reach plugs installed by mistake. This allows a large portion of threaded area into the combustion chamber for carbon to buildup on and makes them extremely hard to remove. I think the motorcraft plug number for the 460 was ASF32 or 42. Can't guarantee that (it's been a long time).

Fun71

On mine the entire hex portion broke off from the metal base and that left nothing to retain the ceramic section, so the cylinder compression popped it right out.

And my experience has been Champions have worked well in all of my vehicles dating back to the early 80s (the Cutlass has run RJ12YC for as long as I've owned it). That's 35+ years with no issues.

droldsmorland

Thank the good lord you don't have a 05-08 F250/350 with the 5.4, 3 valve VCT turd. NIGHTMARE! A spark plug change can run 2-3K after the heads have to come off to EDM the remains of the stupid 2 piece plugs out(fine design). That's if the special OTC extractor tool specifically designed to remove the snapped off remains while the heads are still attached fails.

rustyroger

Perhaps not the same problem as the OP. Often the plugs would beak when someone tried to remove them, even with quality tools in the hands of a competent mechanic.

Roger.

droldsmorland

For the most part, all it takes is proper torque and a drop of 30W on the threads for iron or anti-seize for aluminum. In Fords case its a combo of bad plug design and lack of anti-seize. I wish most manufacturers would apply a dab of anti-seize to many things. Could save a ton of labor time for me their customers and their warranty dept.