2003 LS - Oil, water on plugs

[chronos27]

I opened this thread for a friend, helping to fix his car.

He has hesitation at 30-65. It didn't start happening until after he had his oil changed. He took it back and they said he had a bad spark plug.

I pulled the plugs on the drivers side and noticed orangish colored scale (coolant) on all plugs and noticed it on the valve cover too (seeping past coil seal). Top of plugs are rusty, so coolant has been seeping in for some time. I thought this was the problem.

I removed the manifold and pulled the plugs on the passenger side. The two front ones were clean, but the back one had oil on top of the plug.

Now my question is, how difficult is it to remove the valve cover and fix the coolant problem on the driver's side? Is that a common problem?

What about the oil on the other plug?

Thanks in advance for your help, I'll try searching in the meantime and see if I can come up with a gameplan.

[shorod]

There is no coolant passing through the valve cover, so your question about how difficult it is to remove the valve cover to fix a coolant leak is not relevant. However, I doubt that the discoloration is due to coolant, but rather to moisture/heat/fuel additives. Is his LS using coolant?

I suspect instead that the main problem is the oil leaking into the spark plug wells. As your search likely yielded, this is a common problem for the 1st generation LS, but probably not unheard of for the 2nd generation (2003 and newer). The oil saturating the coil is probably the hesitation as well.

How difficult it is to replace the valve cover gaskets will depend a lot on whether the engine is the V-6 or the V-8. Surprisingly, the valve cover gaskets are easier on the V-8 than on the V-6. You didn't mention which engine your friend's LS has.

-Rod

[clubairth]

Your 2003 LS has just had the coils,plugs,valve cover gaskets and wiper motor gaskets coverage extended to 100K miles!! Ford CSP (Customer Satisfaction Program) 07M07 and 07N09. If you were the owner of record with Ford you will get a letter. But even if you don't the 2003 will still be covered!!
Pretty good deal I think!
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