My wife has a 1999 Mercury Mountaineer 4.0L SOHC with 138k on it. It's been pretty trouble-free, which is good, because working under the hood is an incredible pain in the ***. I tried to change the spark plugs tonight, and, after 90 minutes, only made it through 3 and I'm paying someone to do the other 3. It took me almost an hour just to do the first one, because the EGR tube was in the way and it was almost impossible to get the new one started in the hole. The other two on that side were not bad.

Then I looked at the other side. There's no WAY my hands and arms can contort in a fashion to make it possible to get those plugs out and back in. There's so much **** in the way (primarily the A/C crap) that it just ain't gonna happen. Frustrating as hell.

It takes about a half hour to swap out plugs on the Ram. Granted, reliability has been a substantial issue with the Ram, so it's more than a fair trade, I guess. It's just frustrating to be thwarted by something as simple as spark plugs.

Grrrr...

 

When I had my 85 Camaro it had a 305.. I never did get the one on the passenger rear changed... well over 3 hours to get those done.. I feel your pain!

 

I'm probably spoiled... 4 of my past 5 vehicles have been DOHC 4 cylinders (15 minutes to change all 4 plugs). The only one that wasn't was a 2001 Grand Am, and I replaced the plugs on that when I replaced the lower intake manifold gasket on it (3.4L V6). That was worse than fixing a plenum gasket. I had it replaced twice under an aftermarket warranty, and it failed both times w/in 5000 miles, so I did it myself, and it was still good when I was hit head on by a guy having s seizure 20k later. THAT was trippy.

 

I hear ya. I paid someone to do the plugs on my Grand Prix and they had to loosen the motor mounts, tilt the engine forward just to access the back three.

 

You can sure tell the engineers/designers don't have to work on the vehicles they build. It ain't nothin' new though, on my 67 Barracuda the steering column had to be lowered to replace a burnt out bulb in the tach.