My 2001 7.3 stall and did not start anymore. It droves perfect till i store it for 2 month. After this it start pefect and after i let him idle 2 or 3 min it stall sudenly. After starting again it nocks very hard -i think it was on some cylinders- and was running very bad. I just drove it back to his place. So 3 minutes more most in idle. But i had to push the throttle a lot so that it does not stall again. Now after it cools down ( we have about 50F here) it does not start and smoke leaved the exhaust during starting. Scangauge does not show any faults. Unfortunatly i have no diagnose tester.
I checked a lot of things: fuel, pump, fuelfilter, changed CPS....then i warmed it up with the blockheater and i get him starting. I detected that the exhaust on the passanger side bank is staying cold. So the complete bank seems not running.
Of course -as it is the easiest work i want to check the IDM but here in Germany the 7.3 are rare and so nobody is around the corner with a good one i can ceck. So i disasambled the valve cover. What a f&%.. job! I hope i have never to do this again!
What i saw
The plug inside the cover was coming loose. I pushed it back and the engine runs perfect!
I also checked the driver side and there also the plug was very loosen!
After some surching in the www i founf´d that Ford sell some RETAINER - Ford #2C3Z14A163AB to help the plug not get loosen again. As i want not wait for shipping it to germany and also the costs i decided to go my own way. I know some take a quarter and cut it to make the job but i hate to take a pice of metal into the engine what can cause damage if it get out of the plug.
So i took an old credit card and cut it to fit perfect into / unter the plug. As it was to small i had to take it double each side.
See pics
loosen plug
that is the pice i built for save the plug com out again
ready to go!