98 rear spark plug replacement

[FredA]

Does anyone know of a way to reach the rear sparkplugs ? My 1998 (3.8L) seems to be impossible to reach. Any help would be appreciated.

[12Ounce]

Folks who do the rear spark plugs on a Winnie fall into two camps:

1. Tall slender athletes who can somehow reach the plugs either from above or below without removing any interferences --

2. The rest of us. We first remove the wiper arms, and then the upper and lower plastic cowling. After you do it once, it becomes a 10 minute task. And then the entire rear of the engine box is wide open for repair and inspection.

Good luck!

[FredA]

Thanks ! Can you tell me if there is a trick to removing the wiper arms ?

[12Ounce]

They are held in place with a 15mm nut. Just lift the end cover to get to the nut.

When you first remove the arms from their shafts, it can take a little "rocking" motion to loosen them. Loosen the nut several turns, lift the wipers away from the windschield up to the 90 degree position and rock them (gently) till they loosen.

[road_rascal]

I just replaced the plugs on my 2001 3.8 Windstar last weekend. I removed the upper and lower windshield cowling, but ending up getting to the rear plugs from underneath the van. Even with the cowling removed, there still isn't much room to get to the plugs from the top. From the underside (I have a 3 ton floorjack that can lift my van 2 feet in the air) the #2-3 plugs are very accessable, and the #1 I was able to get from the right wheel well just above the halfshaft. If I didn't remove the cowling I'll bet I could do the whole job in about 1 hour.

[jgbmo]

I replaced mine by jacking up the car (high), placing jackstands, then crawled underneath and reached up between the steering rack and the rear of the subframe. I'm a fairly big guy, but I was able to reach up to the sparks that way.