deekum1627

i herd on another forum thatford fixed the plug problom with the 08. is this true does anyone know for sure??????

StickShifty

yes, different head design for the plugs.

Hufenstang

the late model 08's ... not all of them have new head design that fixed the plugs.

deekum1627

how would i know if i have the new design

StickShifty

the only way to tell are the bolts that hold the valve cover to the head. if you look down by the plugs 1 or 2 of the bolt holes do not line up. I forget the exact number of valve cover bolts. There are alot of threads on this, i also took a few pictures and posted them awhile ago.

deekum1627

so the valve cover bolts wont line up with the plugs do you have a pic

Derf00

Completely false. The Valve covers have nothing to do with the change in the head design. The valve cover change was to address vibration and noise. The revised valve covers have ribs on the inside to stiffen them, thus they could use fewer bolts to hold them on. The change in design has nothing to do with the head or when they made the change to the one piece plug.

I know. I have a 2008 S197 GT (Build date of 9-07) WITH the revised valve covers and I STILL have the two piece spark plug design.

The only certain way to tell is to remove a spark plug to see for yourself. That's how I found out.

If you happen to have the two piece plug design, you can get a set of Champion 7989 plugs which are one piece. I plan on doing this at around 25K. No sense in throwing out good plugs.

StickShifty

i took pictures awhile ago. i dont think i still have them. Its in the ford TSB, the exact way to pick it out. Basically they changed the number of valve cover bolts ( i believe went to lesser amount. So if you look down by the plugs you will see a bolt hole in the head with no hole or bolt coming from the valve cover. You can see it on the passengers side.

i believe its late 2007 and all of 2008 that is safe, dont hold me too it tho.

Also you can take out one of the spark plugs and 100% tell by the plug design.

edit: derf, that was taken from a TSB thread along time ago, if thats true, idk, gatta take the plugs out.

Derf00

The only way to know for certain is to remove a plug. Unless you have a build date in 08 it's still a crap shoot through late '07.

Like I stated above, the Valve cover revision has NOTHING to do with the head design change.

deekum1627

my car is an 08 but i got my car in nov of 07