Ford cylinder heads

[NC Cams]

Caprirs reply and mine imply the same thing - LEGAL PRESSURE.

Lawyer and/or small claims merely raise the level of pressure. Caprirs is the first step - my is a hypothetical escallation strategy.

As a former automotive engineer (now self employed) and an engineer who did product liablity litigation work and a dealer warranty administrator MANY years ago, it all comes down to pressure, who applies it and where.

Legal pressure begets monetary relief - thats the intent anyway. The suit cleary is gonna force the service guy to put his money where his mouth is, that's all.

And you are interested in recovering $6k or so right??? Money could be in their or your pocket. How bad do you want it???

[Rockyr49]

Sure except the dealer repair warranty is 90 dyas or 4000 miles. It's been only 45 days, but about 6000 miles. They are going to claim that the warranty has expired which it has. I have a sister in law that is an attorney. She is going to write a letter, but tells me that the 6000 miles will probably do me in.

[gmfoster]

Soe one stated this problem is the replacement of these plugs. The truth is many of these have blown out with out ever being replaced. And even people that have taken a 100000 mile extended warrenty are refused coverage because it not an internal lubricated part.

Its a Ford Defect and just maybe some day they will have to make it right. Wonder whay they are closing plants and laying off 30000 employees?

[unterhaus]

since the mid 80's, gm has been building some of their cars in the same factories with the same American workers as toyota. Say what you want about unions, but the fact that these nearly identical cars sell much better when they have a toyota sticker on them says something about the brands, and I say it's the integrity of their management.
Now they want to move the manufacturing overseas, blaming American workers for their problems. The management of these companies need to look at themselves in the mirror and ask why nobody wants to buy their cars. They just aren't building cars people want to buy. When they do, as in the case of the Taurus back in the 80's, they are very successful. It's not just price, most of the japanese cars are more expensive. I'm not going to worry about $5000 now if it's going to save me $5000 spread in repairs over the life of the car. I'd be happy to get that deal, because I hate car problems.

[NC Cams]

Having worked for a Japanese car company, this much became clearly apparent:

The J car company I worked for was run by people who were car people who made money by creating and making good cars. Besides, their culture makes it a shameful thing to do something dishonorable like sell/make a bad design. THeir execs make as uch as 20 times that of labor.

Having also worked for an American car company, I often found that the process was purely profit driven. Never the time or budget to fix something that should never have gotten into production in the first place. Also, a lot of "How can we optimize profit via "cost cuts" and/or process optimization (read that as cost downs)". The US execs make 400 times that of labor...

One philosophy was to make money by building and selling good cars, the other is simply to make money.... Which do you think is the better long term strategy now????

Re: union comments - each and every extravagant benefit given/extracted by the unions for their members was AGREED TO BY MANAGEMENT. In its day, you could give away the store and recover it by price increases. Sadly, those days are gone and the cost structure has to change...

Three is only one thing worse than inflation and that is deflation. "Globalization", IMO is merely a nice way of saying the same thing. Be prepared for a deflation of our life styles.

Sure was fun while it lasted. Like the line uttered near the end of the movie "Risky Business" goes, "...time of your life, huh kid???".

[JDEMPSEY]

The heli coil is not a good idea but there is an insert that works fine. I have done many of the ford 5.4L and 4.6L heads with an insert. Some are running 20lbs of boost on them with the inserts.

[CraigC]

After reading this thread, I decided to call a good friend who is a tech at a local Ford dealership. According to him this is a HUGE problem. They see several vehicles per week needing spark plug thread repair or cylinder head replacement(if the damage is too severe)

As a tech myself, I was extremely surprised to hear that Ford spec-ed out short-reach, tapered-seat plugs for use in an aluminum head. That is just begging for trouble. The industry norm would have been 3/4"-reach gasketed plugs. In 25 years in this business I don't think I've seen anything but that in an aluminum head.

ROCKYR49, before you plunk down big coin for that new motor, my buddy informs me that Ford has not changed the design, nor do they intend to. You could probably confirm that by simply having a parts guy pull a plug for your existing engine and for a current model year engine. Compare plug length and sealing design.

For everyone. If you are going to use anti-sieze on your plugs, the most important word to remember is "sparingly". Only a very small amount is needed and going overboard can cause driveability issues.

Figures my first post here would have nothing to do with machinework.

[Rockyr49]

Too late. The new engine is in place. At least I get a 36,000 mile warranty. Maybe instead of anti seize, I should try loctite and just not ever change them. Really though, I'll just pay it off this year and when it does it again, I'll get rid of the beast. My sister-in-law is a special assistant to the states attorney and a real good buddy's wife works for the local congressman. I'm not done with this yet. I may ge no satisfaction, but Ford is going to know my name. That's for sure.
Thanks everyone for your input.