|
NW Iowa. / SW Arizona | Just thought I’d give a heads up to Eco-boost owners to replace your spark plugs when start getting some miles on them. I bought a new 2011 F-150 with the Eco-boost, the first year they came out. I absolutely love this truck have had zero problems with it other then having to replace the heater resistor one time until yesterday morning. We drove it out to AZ this week and stayed with Buster 50 Friday night and picked up our used RZR Buster was storing for us until we got out here. Loaded the trailer in the morning and wasn’t 1/2 mile from Lake Havasu climbing up a hill and the engine started cutting out and the check engine light came on. I pulled over and looked the engine over but couldn’t physically see anything wrong so drove it 8 miles back to a Ford dealership to get checked out.
The shop foreman asked me before they even hooked it up to the computer how many miles were on it and if I ever replaced the spark plugs. I said about 84,000 miles and no the original plugs were still in it. He said he was pretty sure my problem was going to be the plugs. He claims they’ve had a number of spark plug problems at the 60,000-80,000 mile mark. I said this was the first I’ve heard of this. Had I known that I definitely would’ve changed them myself before we headed out here.
Sure enough computer code came back number 2 was randomly misfiring. Told them to replace all 6 plugs and the recommended 6 boots they also say go bad. The tech said all 6 plugs showed signs of what he callled blow by on the plugs, said I was lucky to get that many miles out of it.
The service tech also asked me if I’ve had my transmission flushed, I said no. He recommended doing it sometime at this mileage, claims they use a different fluid in these trucks and they need flushed more often, never heard of that before either. He wasn’t pushing to have it done with them but to consider doing it sometime in the near future. I asked him what it cost to flush it out and he thought it was around $300 but I’d have to ask the service manager to get a firm price. I asked if that included replacing the filter and he said no they normally don’t do that unless the detect metal fillings while flushing it. The service tech was super nice, was very impressed with him.
Ran great the rest of our trip. I’m just glad it happened where it did and not in the middle of the desert somewhere :-). | |
|
Heads up to Eco-boost owners.
