1999 Ford Expedition review from North America

Electronic odometer blanked out.

Power driver's seat stopped working.

Ball joints replaced.

Changing plugs and coils is a MISERABLE job.

Spark plug blew out of the head.

We dealt with the small problems because the vehicle served our needs well. We're all tall and my wife is a caterer and the vehicle is used for her work and for our road trips. The mileage (mpg) is bad but a worth trade off since we don't put many miles on the vehicle. The end of the road for us was when a spark plug exploded out of the head. Ours is a normally asperated (no supercharger) 5.4L model and when that thing went WOW!

Before the plug blew I attempted to change the spark plugs and coils (there's one coil per cylinder and it's on top of each plug) and the space is so cramped that I had to get a pro to finish the job. The engine is recessed into the firewall and there's not enough over head space to get to the rear most plugs. Lots of items must be removed to do the job. Back to the spark plug... The plug that blew is on the passenger side in the rear. THE most difficult to get to. It stripped out all the threads. I hired a mechanic to take a look and he, along with other mechanics, said the only way to fix it is to replace the head. Turns out Ford has too few threads on these heads and upgraded the heads on the 2001 models (8 threads on the 2001+ where as the older ones only have 4!). Although the problem typically happens on the superchaged 5.4L (Lightnings) all the mechanics said they'd seen this issue on the normally asperated ones too.

I'm getting rid of the vehicle.