Ford 5.4L Triton V8 is crap

[Jaylegger]

I sure miss the methods employed to try to get the cars started on a cold morning. Pump accelerator twice maybe 5 times, hold down half way, feather choke while starting and pray. The largest and most important advancement over the years is now when you turn the key the darn thing starts, every single day.

 

[dodge man]

This is probably already been mentioned, but think of the number of 5.4 motors Ford has put in trucks. It might be in the high hundreds of thousands if not in the millions. That just makes it seems like there is a bunch of problems, when it's probably not worse than any other engine.

 

[Dmace]

This is probably already been mentioned, but think of the number of 5.4 motors Ford has put in trucks. It might be in the high hundreds of thousands if not in the millions. That just makes it seems like there is a bunch of problems, when it's probably not worse than any other engine.

That makes no sense what so ever. Even if Ford made 1 of these engines, it's still a bad design that was prone to fail.
If someone makes a million square wheels, is it " probably not worse than any other" wheel...?

 

[dodge man]

Dmace, yes it does make sense. When is the last time you heard anybody complaining about a problem with a Mopar slant six? They made a lot of them, but hardly any are on the road anymore. Probably very few people on this board own anything with a slant six in it. If Ford built over a million 5.4 Tritons, you are going to get a lot of people on this board owning them and hence some complaints about them.

 

[Dmace]

I agree that you HEAR about the problem more due to the number on the road but that does NOT make it "probably not worse than any other".
It's still a bad design...
Again, do you seriously think it's ok to make a bad product as long as you sell a ton of them?

 

[ruffdog]

The tritan 3 valve per cyl engines have sparkplugs that are skinny and long so they can reach down between the valves from the top. The problem is the plugs they used was a 2 piece design, the upper that includes the threads, and the lower extension going to the cylinder. The two pieces were swedged together at the taper seat area. When you go to take them out, the bottom stays because of carbon and the top comes out. There are special tools to reach down and slightly thread the broken off part so you can pull it out. Then you carefully check that you didn't leave any pieces in the cylinders.

Now the important part. Do not replace your plugs with the same design plugs! Champion has made a different ONE piece design that won't come apart when the next time comes around.

 

[deerefan]

I agree that you HEAR about the problem more due to the number on the road but that does NOT make it "probably not worse than any other".
It's still a bad design...
Again, do you seriously think it's ok to make a bad product as long as you sell a ton of them?

You will hear more problems if there are more to complain about. I am not a big mod motor fan. They are a pain to work on and forget rebuiding one. The tolerances are incredibly small, borderline ridiculous. I am not convinced OHC is the best when cam-in-block motors make as much if not more power with less moving parts, hence less items for catastrophic failure. I own a mod motor, a 4.6. As I stated before, a good truck to run around in but with non-PI heads, it does not tow well at all. These motors really tokk the mustang, especially naturally aspirated, out of the pony car wars for better than ten years. They just got back in the ring with the new 650hp Shelby, but it is a much newer design.

 

[ruffdog]

Four Wheeler magazine, Dec 2010, had a big article about this subject, "The Ford Three-Valve Broken Spark Plug Blues"

The first sentence of the article says: "If you are the owner of a Ford truck with a three valve (3v) modular V-8 or V-10 engine built from 2004 thru 2007, you have either faced the misery of broken spark plugs-- or you will."

http://www.fourwheeler.com/techarti...ee_valve_broken_spark_plug_blues/viewall.html

 

[Dmace]

The tritan 3 valve per cyl engines have sparkplugs that are skinny and long so they can reach down between the valves from the top. The problem is the plugs they used was a 2 piece design, the upper that includes the threads, and the lower extension going to the cylinder. The two pieces were swedged together at the taper seat area.

That's only one problem with the Ford modular engines. That was the broken spark plug problem. The other which happened to a good friends truck which I had to fix was the spark plug literally popping out of the head. There were not enough threads in the head and the spark plug would pop right out requiring new threads to be drilled into the head. Luckily since Ford made so many of these poorly designed engines and did so for so long, there is a kit to repair it and install a new thread sleeve.

 

[Car Doc]

My unwritten shop policy is I wont do tune-ups on the 5.4 just because of the broken plug problem I have enough headaches already. I pretty much only work on Toyota and Honda but my customers drive other cars also.

I do what I can but replacing plugs on a 5.4 is out I send them to Ford on that they are used to fixing them.

I will however plug my scan tool in for a fee and repair other drive ability issues which are almost always (in my experience anyway) a bad coil or 2 on the back of the right bank or a pvc hose collapse/split.