Ford 7.3 Gas Spark Plugs: How Many Does a Ford 7.3 Have?
It is an 8 cylinder. Unless car companies make big design changes, you can count the number of cylinders to get the number of spark plugs an engine has. 4 cylinders equals 4 spark plugs. This rarely changes unless you have a diesel motor which requires 0 spark plugs regardless of how many cylinders that motor has.
This engine is an 8-cylinder engine thus it will have 8 spark plugs. But you will need 9 wires as one wire is for the distributor to the coil. You can buy these wires individually or in sets depending on your need.
To learn more about this engine and its spark plugs, just continue to read our article. It explores the issue letting you know what is going on with this motor so you can be prepared for when the spark plugs fail. Take a few minutes to see the problems with this motor’s spark plugs
Does a 7.3 Have Spark Plugs?
Yes, it does. Every gas engine has spark plugs. If they didn’t the fuel could not be ignited and the car or truck you are in won’t run. The engine type that does not has spark plugs is the diesel engine.
Diesel fuel is different from regular gas and does not need a spark to ignite. Instead, you will have glow plugs that do the work of spark plugs differently. For this motor, because it is a V8, it will have 8 spark plugs.
And you will need to buy 8 if you are going to change them. In tune-ups, every spark plug needs to be removed and replaced with new ones if you are going to get maximum performance.
Spark plugs vary in cost due to retail outlet differences and brand differences. It is always a good idea to change the spark plug wires at the same time you are replacing your spark plugs. That will protect your performance and have the spark plugs work better.
How Many Spark Plugs Does a 7.3 Powerstroke Have?
This depends on which version of the 7.3 Powerstroke engine you own. If it is a diesel version, then you do not have to worry about spark plugs at all. You just have to worry about the glow plugs. Those parts are not that expensive to replace and are probably cheaper than a set of spark plugs.
Ford did surprise the auto industry when it developed its 7.3 Godzilla gas motor. However, when they designed the engine, they kept some traditions. For example, this is an 8-cylinder motor, not a 10-cylinder engine.
That means that it will have 8 spark plugs, with 4 on each side. In looking at images of this motor, even with all the extra parts, there seems to be ample room to woke on the plugs. At least on one side of the engine.
Ford 7.3 Gas Spark Plug Wires
In the old days when car engines were simple to work on, spark plug wires were just spark plug wires. It did not really matter which brand you used as they worked on almost every gas engine made at the time. There may have been some exceptions but those were not common.
However, today many engines have been redesigned, given specialized parts, and the power needed to produce a spark means upgrading the spark plug wires. Not every set of wires will work on every motor anymore.
You can buy a set at Amazon that are compatible with the original wires Ford installed when they made the motor. They will run you roughly $100 for the set of 8. There are other companies putting out spark plug wires for this engine and the brand name will matter.
Your local auto parts stores should have a few sets of these in stock as Ford has been trying hard to get the supply to meet the demand. We have not heard how successful they have been at doing this.
Part of the problem was that the wires needed to be redesigned and we will talk about that in the next section.
Ford 7.3 Spark Plug Wire Problems
The biggest problem is that there is a shortage of spark plug wires for the 7.3 gas engine. There was a design flaw in the original spark plugs. This flaw caused the wires to overheat and start to arc against the block.
The wires were placed between 2 header pipes and those pipes produce a lot of heat. That heat broke the wires down and cause the problem. The spark plug wires needed to be redesigned to solve this issue.
This created the biggest problem. Because the vendor making these wires had to do the redesigning, etc., it caused a supply shortage and some owners have waited weeks to get their replacement wires.
Ford has been aware of this problem since 2020 so hopefully, they have worked all the bugs out by now and have enough wires built to meet the demand for new spark plug wires.
There are supposed to be 2 upgrades to the spark plug wires as of March 2022 so this issue should not be as common as it once was. You may want to check the coil wire as well. It can go bad on you as the regular wires can. It costs about $24 for the wire alone.
Some Final Words
The word is that you should never buy the first run of any engine. The engine builders are sending them out there to unsuspecting buyers to use them as guinea pigs. They are looking to see what bugs arise and then start working on upgrades.
This seems to be true with spark plugs and their wires. Since the new engine was made, there have been 3 sets of wires made with 2 of them as upgrades to fix the heat problem. Wait for the next generations to get a better running engine.
