Yeah, I am not surprised that much either, but it is a bit baffling because the "Time-sert" kit is FORD approved for fixing stripped out spark plug holes. Granted the Jag heads were done by Cosworth, but still.

It should go pretty straight forward, I will check the remainder of the plugs just be sure none of those are getting loose.

 

Good project Chas, good luck from 'management'.

 

It's good to have management support...thanks!

I just installed the Time-sert kit, man it was a breeze!! The tapping went real smooth, I put some bearing grease on the step-tap and it worked great to trap the metal shavings. Then I took a pick with a right angle at the end and ran it around the bottom of the hole every time I took the tap out to clean the flutes to catch and grease globules that had metal shavings. From what I could see no shavings got dropped down in the cylinder (the piston was pretty much at TDC as well. Though the kit was expensive it was a real quality tool kit. I took out the rest of the plugs and cleaned the threads off and applied some High-temp thread locker (~200in/lbs break) to the plugs. Some were a little loose too with some oil blow-by on the threads!
I applied some Loctite 266 high-temp and high-strength (Red) to the insert on the head-side, then applied removable (blue) loctite to the spark plug itself. I did not want the next time I take the plug out to have the insert come out with the plug hence the weaker loctite on the plug. The insert does have some cold rolled threads at the end to help lock the insert into the new threads though.

I torqued all the plugs to 15ft/lbs (I tried 13ft/lbs) then 15 and the plug did not move, so I gave it a ever-so-slight tug at the end. Factory spec is 11ft/b. Which I think is weak even for Aluminum heads.

Next up is installing the intake manifold and stuff under the hood and letting the loctite cure for 24 hours.

 

Great to hear it went smoothly! Good idea on the grease to catch the metal shavings. Maybe using a very small shop vac attachment would work afterwards for any small shavings that might have eluded the grease. Probably overkill though.

This should go in the FAQ section....

 

Chas, yes, that Timesert kit is a really nice kit (as the price reflects). But, it is an "all in one" kit though too. I have one sitting in my garage from my truck. I had to fix a bad engineering design from Ford (gotta love 3 threads holding a plug in place in an aluminum head). I ended up doing all 8 plugs at the same time. For that, I pulled the heads since the risk of leaving something behind from doing 8 outweighed the time needed to pull the heads in my opinion. Besides, that gave me a chance to port/polish the heads and intake to get some more needed power.

Good to hear everything is going good for you. The sleeves have not been a problem for me over 20K miles.

 

I would have liked to use my shop vac with some small hose on the end to suck out any debris that may have been left over but performing this in a Apartment parking lot with no electrical outlets near by deters this pretty well. I was very pleased with the ease of this kit especially with the fact that NO drilling was required. Today, I am putting the intake back on. Hopefully, will be driving the X later on today.

Chris,
That is outrageous to have only 3 threads especially in Al. Was this a 'penny smart-dollar stupid' decision from within Ford?

For the record,

The inserts I used was P/N# 44186 from Time-sert. It is M14x1.25 taper seat insert with a .660"/16.8mm reach or length, which is very close to what the spark plug thread reach is that fits the X-type.

 

Chas, from my understanding of others research (so, take it for what it is worth), Ford was attempting to save a little bit on manufacturing costs since machining 3 threads costs less than doing 4 or 5.

I do know that I was "responsible" for convincing Ford to not put an inflatable tire as a spare on the new trucks. It was going to be a tire that was smaller than the factory tire and would have been vacuum sealed (ie, the rubber sucked up tight against the rim) and then to use the tire, you would have pulled it out of a small compartment, filled the tire with the associated can of compressed air, and then mounted it to the truck. Unfortunately, one slight problem with that. A lot of trucks come with limited slip/posi-trac rear ends. Putting different size tires on that axle tends to lead to the limited slip/posi-trac unit giving up the ghost pretty quickly. Once this issue was brought up, I never heard anything more about it. This group was also responsible for convincing Ford to go back to a 2WD option with the Expeditions. Granted, they didn't listen to well though when we showed them how the 2003 test mules faired horribly compared to a stock 2001 truck when 4x4ing. There were about 30 Expeditions with the 2 Ford mules going through the George Washington National Forest. The only trucks that go stuck that day were the test mules due to the independent rear suspensions catching on everything. C'est la vie. Guess they figured not many people 4x4 Expeditions.