It is a very well made and positive locking, I have been using them for nearly 10 years now.

Fram had made a product called the "Sure-Drain" (some are still available) that used a check valve style valve. The drain nipple had a wire finger that opened the valve to drain the oil, there was also a nice brass O-ring gasketed cap that created a positive seal. Probably the best product Fram ever made.

I used the Sure-Drain on my Miatas for years and never had an issue--don't know why it was discontinued?

 

ok so it's a crappy design then lol. i work at a ford dealership, haven't been there long only about a year but nobody else torque's these either. and nobody's gotten a come back from plugs not torqued properly.

i will say this tho as it kidna belongs in this, my buddy had to do head gaskets on a 99 f150 5.4, and when he got the heads off we were looking at them and two of the plug holes only had one thread left, all the others threads were stripped out besides for one thread. the guys lucky he didn't have a plug blow out and take out his coil. lol.

 

The fact that you work at a dealership mean nothing. If anything it just goes to show the stupidity of the people working on the general publics vehicles.

 

It's not a bad design, it's poor maintenance practice such as is being supplied by the dealership at which you work; which BTW is operating in violation of Ford's maintenance protocols. This does not surprise me as my nearly 50 years of motoring have shown that dealer repair shops are by and large hotbeds of incompetency. It also explains the plug blow-out reports where the owner swears the car has never been worked on "anywhere but the dealership".

The '89 to mid-'91 Miatas had a "problem" with crank noses failing, that was linked directly to dealerships (and others) not properly torquing the crank bolt when replacing the timing belt. This was on what was was purposely designed to be a lightweight, racing, crank nose/pulley assembly; and never would have happened on a pro racing circuit where mechanics are either much better than competent, or looking for work.

I once had an apprentice mechanic working for me when I was PE for a medium sized manufacturing company, who came to me one day and asked how he could respond to his friends and others when he told them he was a mechanic, and then told them where he worked. The typical response was along the lines of "Oh, not a real mechanic..."

I told him to tell them that "He worked on multi-million dollar pieces of machinery, far more complex than any automobile, that had to run 24/7 non-stop for 180 days before each scheduled tear-down.

Which is the equivalent of 1,500,000 miles at 50MPH."

So who is the "real" mechanic...

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Oh yeah, what dealership is it at which you work? My step-daughter lives up near Bay City and I want to tell her to never bring her Focus there...

 

I blew a plug...i wish I had learned the better way...

i ended up replacing a cylinder head...

guess what I used when I put it all back together.... a torque wrench!

 

This is hog wash, Ford techs dont use em, why should I?