Misfiring due to water in spark plug holes
 

I have a 99 GT. This happened a few months ago when I went to an automatic car wash. It now just happened sitting in the rain the last few days. Any water that gets on the intake manifold drips down into the first two spark plug holes on the driver's side. I didn't even drive in the rain, the car was parked. Somehow water is getting into the engine compartment. I noticed water puddled on the intake manifold and went for a drive. It had a bad misfire(like last time after the car wash). I can back home and removed the COP's(they are factory). The first plug boot(closest to the front) on the driver's side was wet. The second plug hole was almost full with water! I removed everyone and blew them out with air. This is getting to be a pain. Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas on how to solve this? The rubber plug boot on the COP's aren't tight enough to seal out water. I've never had this problem on any other car. After I dry the plug holes, the car runs fine again.

Water has got to be running somewhere it shouldnt be. Make sure your hood scoop isnt leaking, and check around the hood. Cars are built to keep water off the motor for the most part so something like seals or etc is going wrong. Try spraying your hood with ferbreez, then opening it and seeing where it leaks out from.

Try adding extra dielectric grease to keep the connections water-free. Also, the boots sound like they are shot if they aren't sealing the plug holes.

Never have this problem and I wash my engine every month or so. Replace the boots like they said.

Thanks. I didn't realize that I could just buy the boots separately......I saw the price of replacement COP's(the whole unit) and almost fell off my chair! I think they are priced at $83 each! I'll check my local Ford dealer.

I called the dealer, and the boots are available separately. They are around $13 each....just incase anyone else is curious. Thanks guys.

Check eBay too. You can get all of the coil on plugs new for like $118 off a guy on ebay. They are brand new units and its what I used when I blew a heater hose off and cooked 4 COPs.

Spike,

Are they as good as the Ford COP's? That seems way too cheap!

Looks like everything on ebay is a no-name brand. One guy is selling a set of 8 for $63.

When I got mine about 2 years ago or so they came in a Ford box and were OEM replacement COPs. The reason I think he sells them so cheap is that he gets a shit ton of them and sells alot of them I mean every 2v uses the same COP and so do the 4v's if I remember correctly. So there is a large mass of cars,trucks,suvs,vans that use the same setup. You can always ask him though. Mine was a set of 8 shipped for like $118 I think is what I pad for them.

I went to Ford and got 1 coil pack for $86 back then and said screw this and returned it and went online and got those. No problems here.

Get the Ford or Motorcraft part number and search for that. I guarantee you'll find it on eBay, and for much less. Last time I bought a COP it was $30, and that was OEM Ford.

Pressure check the the heads it sounds like you have a cylinder head gasket leak. I hope you like your car because this is a very extensive and costly process but that is the most worst case scenario. The next thing you can check is the intake manifold it may have a crack.

Not sure how a head gasket leak would cause water to be getting into the plug holes and on top of the intake. Just like everyone else said, replace the boots and see if that does the trick.

A head gasket leak would be indicated by burning coolant and/or oil. Water in the plug holes would more indicative of a bad coolant cross-over or bad boots not sealing out rain water.