Where are the glow plugs located on a ford 7.3?

Answer 1

They are located under the valve covers, 1 per cylinder.

Disconnect the Batteries, get a ladder and plan on getting comfortable (i use a large foam pad between my chest and all those sharp points in the engine compartment.

Remove the air intake and all the other stuff which gets beween you and the valve covers. There is a large rectangular connector in the middle of each valve cover disconnect this connector. Note: If you have a voltmeter you can search the Ford forum and learn which pins go to each of the Glow Plugs. You can carefully check the resistance cold of each plug and determine which one are defective. Cold the resistance of each glow plug is nearly zero. If any are open guess what you have lots of work ahead of you.

FYI these things are cheap nowadays $8 to $25 bucks from NAPA depending on which ones you choose. The low buck Autolite ones seem to work as well and as long as the OEM items. If you have more than 50K on the motor I would replace them all as the amount of work to do all eight is not that much more once you have the valve covers off.

If your 7.3 is hard to start or no start when cold you should also check the glow plug relay, this item has changed many times over the production run from Ford (Navistar) because of all the problems with the glow plug cycle. I've repaired many Fords where the problem was not the glow plugs but a fried glow plug relay.

Go to the Ford Forums and see what they have done. I have a 1998 F350 and found the glow plug relay bad, purchased the "super heavy duty" relay from Mouser Electronics for about what you will pay for a OEM or NAPA exact replacement. I'll never have to worry about that relay again! I now use the modification for all my customers with 7.3 diesels. The change is easy and its one less item for future problesm

regards,

ggrimes2@Yahoo.com