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Coolant in spark plug tube


M.j.r

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Hello gentleman. Was hoping to inquire and hopefully find some help diagnosing my 2013 edge limited. Had a recent missfire start under load on the highway. Was finally able to get it to throw a engine light on. Cylinder 2 missfire. Of course it's the back center cylinder. Now I have removed the upper intake and upon removing the ignition coil the entire spark plug was submerged in coolant. (Yes it's confirmed as coolant). My question is this. To my knowledge nothing in that area has coolant in it aside from the cylinder head. Has anyone else heard of this issue? The coolant reservoir is only slightly down, nothing alarming. I've since cleaning the tube and will be next doing a pressure test on the cooling system. I fear a fracture in the cylinder head but we will see what we find. If anyone has heard of this or knows something that I'm missing please let me know. For the record I'm a licensed tech by trade but have minimal experience with this particular engine. Thanks

 

Matt

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Hi Matt! Highly unusual to hear of this type issue with the 3.5L (I assume this is what you have since you mentioned the back center cylinder) engine. More typically, there is block porosity (rare), head gasket failure (rare), and/or water pump failure (a bit more frequent). But as with all these crammed engine bays, Bank 1 suffers from heat suffocation, so problems are more likely to show up on that side.

 

How much mileage do you have on your 2013/engine? Are you monitoring CHT and ECT temps off the OBD port? A lot of idling/traffic, or mostly highway driving...?

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Hey thanks for the speedy reply. 90k kilometers. 3.5. Mixed driving but more highway. I havnt yet monitored temps with the obd. I did however watch the in dash gauge without any fluctuation while it was misfiring. I can't say I expected to find coolant in there. If the pressure test this evening doesn't show anything conclusive I was going to reassemble with new plugs and do some further monitoring on the obd. Just wanted to ensure I wasn't missing anything obvious that you guys may know. Thanks

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The coolant was down about an inch. Was confirmed as coolant definitely. After I thoroughly cleaned the tube and dried it. A coolant pressure test with the engine cold didn't show anything. After adding dye to the coolant I ran it for a few hours and there was dye in the tube. I got in touch with our local ford dealer and altho skeptical they agreed to have a look. They essentially did their own testing but confirmed the head is fractured into a cooling jacket. Engine is coming out and a new head is on order. I'm 5000 kilometers under my warranty expiry, and it's all being covered. So needless to say I'm feeling pretty lucky. May go buy a lottery ticket haha. Thought id share my results as I hate reading unresolved threads. Thanks for the input guys.

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