1997 Ford Explorer V6 4.0L 6 Piece Fuel Injector O-Ring Kit Ford OEM FDEEK00036

Okay, friends. So, one of the first things we need to do is get under the hood and locate the fuse box. We're gonna open up the fuse box, we're gonna flip it over and we're gonna find number 41 mini fuse. You're gonna look for where it corresponds to right in here and you're gonna see it's a blue 15 amp, remove that fuse. At this point, I'm gonna set it right here in the box. And I'm gonna recover that box and we're going to move along. So, now we're just gonna start up the vehicle and we're going to wait for it to die out. All right. So, that's telling me that we don't have any fuel pressure inside the system, we can continue, take the key out of the ignition. The next thing we wanna do is locate the fuel rail, which is located right alongside of the intake. It comes along the driver side, has a little thing that comes over to the other side of crossover tube, and then it comes along the passenger side as well. That's gonna go right on to those fuel injectors, we need to get it out of here.

So, we need to do is make sure there's no sand or dirt in the area. The next thing we're gonna do, let's get this off of here. We might need a little screwdriver, I might be able to push with my finger check it, that looks great. Give this a little wiggle, this should want to pop right off of there. See if I can give it a tug. There we are, that comes right off. Take a look down in here. And we wanna find our fuel injectors next, which are located down underneath the fuel rail heading into the engine itself. Disconnect all of your fuel injectors. Now I'm gonna use my pocket screwdriver, push right on this tab, and then I'm gonna draw up on the wires carefully, see if I can get that to push. Check that, let's do the same to all of them. So, the next thing we're gonna do is move along to taking off these sparkplug wires. It's important to remember which wire goes where. So, you can just mark them however you'd like and then of course, take a picture if you need to. This is not the firing order. I'm just kind of doing this so I can remember one, two, three, just like that.

Now, when we take these off, obviously you wanna make sure that you don't take off your markings. There we are. We'll set these aside. Next, we're gonna move along to taking off the mounting piece that holds the wires to this bracket. Let's see this will go right in between. Get that off of there, move these further. Okay, so next what I'd like to do is get this whole bracket off of here and out of the way. To do that, you're gonna notice that you have mounting bolts up along the top area and then you're gonna have some mounting bolts down on the engine side. Let's grab our 10-millimeter, we're gonna grab that forward lower bolt. There's that forward one. Now we're gonna come right to the backside, we're gonna do the rearward one with a 15-millimeter, almost there. There it is. Before we go any further, let's go ahead and disconnect this right here. It's got a little tab, get under it and you should be able to separate these two. Looks good. Then on the backside of the coil, there's the electrical harness spot, you wanna get that off as well. There it is.

Now let's remove the upper bolts, remove that one in a couple of threads. There's one, two, and move this stuff around. Let's get this bracket up a little bit. Careful for all your hoses and stuff. We'll set that right up top and out of our way for now. I move this right out of the way just by disconnecting it, you don't necessarily need to. Next, we're gonna come right down here to the fuel injectors, you can grab that little tab, push it, and just grab the wiring and lift it up and out. Do the same to all your fuel injectors. Come on. Awesome. Next, we're gonna remove the 10-millimeter mounting bolts. You can tell where they are just by following the brackets that come off of the fuel injector rails, there's two on either side. 10-millimeter little swivel, that's one, there's the other one here. Seems a little bit harder to get the angle. Nice. It's one of our bolts. The other one here with our little magnet, I can. Okay, so at this point, we need to doubly make sure that you're wearing safety protection. You get your hand protection, your eye protection, because what we're gonna do is we're gonna shake this around a little bit, and we're gonna try to draw up on the fuel rail.

When we do that, it's either gonna separate the fuel rail from the fuel injector up at the top, or it could pull the fuel injector out of the bottom. So we'll see. Still got a little bit of pressure here. There we are. That moves all around. Awesome. So, the next thing we would do is just grab some pliers or if you didn't have pliers, you could try to use a screwdriver of some sort. But anyway, we need to get this up and out of here. So, be careful not to damage your O-rings, it's a good idea to replace them if you're doing this service that not everybody has access to them. Let's go ahead and pop them up out of here just like the dentist. There's your fuel injector. Now, if you were to look down inside this hole where the fuel injector was, there's the area we're gonna be going to next. The next thing we're gonna do is get this fuel rail right off the top here. To do that, you can use a T30 Torx bit and remove these two bolts, and then get this right out of the way. So, grab this and separate those two pieces.

So, the next thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna use a screwdriver, and I'm gonna come right down along the edge of the plastic. I'm gonna grab the little piece so I can show you real quick what I'm talking about. This is what the piece looks like inside the engine, and of course, the fuel injector would go right inside like this. So, what we wanna do is go right along the engine and the lip of this plastic and try to chisel a nice straight line straight down. What you wanna make sure you don't do is go too far off to the side and chisel into the aluminum of the engine. You need to be very careful. Make a straight line. Once it's broken free, we're gonna come like this and then we're gonna pry it up and out. Go ahead and grab that screwdriver, it's gonna go right up against the side, like I said kind of at an angle, and then just try to drive, oh, yeah, that's split. Nice. Okay, I'm gonna try to get in here, I can see it lifting up. Like I said, we wanna be careful not to scratch the sides of the engine. Here it is. So, that one's pretty much deteriorated. They get very stiff and brittle and that's why you need to replace them.

The next thing I'm gonna do is just try to clean up this area a little bit, try to get out of any of those other chunks or anything that might have gotten stuck down in this hole. And then of course any of this area belong here, just see if you can get it as clean as possible. And when you do just kind of brush away from the hole. That's looking good. Okay. Next, we're gonna try to blow a little bit of air down inside the hole. If you have an extension nozzle, that'll probably come in handy. That's just gonna make sure just in case any little pieces of plastic made their way down in there. We got them all out of there. Just take an extra good look, make sure there's no pieces that are jammed in there. I don't see any damage to the engine. I think we did pretty good on that one. Awesome. The next thing I'm gonna do is just put a tiny bit of penetrating spray on this just to kind of lubricate, you could also use engine oil or whatever you've got really, some sort of liquid lubricant. I'm gonna rest it in that hole with the flat side facing up. That looks pretty great. Next, I like to use the backside of a socket. If you have a punch this size, that would be great.

I'm going to use a 15-millimeter, and I'm going to try to tap this down. See if I can get my hands on here. You wanna try to get it down as flat as possible. So I'm looking, I can see that I'm almost flush with the engine here. I'm gonna make sure that I keep going all the way down until it bottoms out. This looks perfect, it made its way all the way down to where it's gonna sit in right with the engine down there. Awesome. All right, so next, of course, we will go right down the line on this side. And then the process would be approximately the same on the other side and exception of you just don't have all this kind of in the way. Next, it's gonna be time to get the fuel injector in there. Just go ahead and coat those O-rings with a tiny bit of lubricant. It's always a good idea to replace them. If you can't replace them at least take them off there, give them a stretch and make sure that they're not ripped, torn or brittle. These ones looked great, need a little bit of lube on there.

Press it right down and that fits great. So, of course, you wanna make sure that you lubricate this one gasket right here that's going to go on to that fuel rail. Bring it in nice and easy. We're going to connect these two pieces together right here. And then, of course, press the whole thing down onto all the fuel injectors afterward. So, let's get that together, I'm gonna swing it down, rest it over those fuel injectors and then, of course, press down. That just locked all of those in. We've got our two bolts. Go ahead and start those in and bottom them out. Now that we haven't both bottomed out, we're just gonna take them just that tiny bit extra. That's it. This one on there. That's it right there. Now let's get these fuel rail mounting bolts in. Start them both in before you tighten either of them down. Go ahead and snug that up. Let's go ahead and get these fuel injectors plugged back in. Give it a click, make sure you hear that click. If you don't hear a click that's not on.

Next thing we're gonna do is plug this in right here. Hear the click, we've got this wire, we know where that's gonna go in a minute. Okay, let's grab the bracket. Carefully bring this down in here like that. Nice. There it is. Awesome. Let's grab this little booth, make sure we put that on there. It's easier to do while the brackets still loose. And then of course we can connect these two at this point and then make sure that it's secured. This is looking good. Make sure you don't have any of your wires pinched or around the wrong side of the bracket. That's obviously gonna become an issue. Grab those two upper bolts, that one there. Start that one in there. We're not gonna tighten them up yet until we start the other two. Remember the big bolt went on the rearward side and the smaller bolt on the forward side. There we go. That's studded on there. Awesome. All right. Let's start snugging them up. Let's snug these top ones up. Remember that they only screw into plastic. That bottomed out, tiny bit more, that's it. Move along to the other bolts. If you took these off, just make sure you put them back on.

Let's get this plugged back into the back of the coil here at the click, give it a nice tug. Now we're gonna grab our sparkplug wires, bring those back up to their resting location. Let's get them out of here. They come out through there, awesome. Okay, now obviously, you wanna make sure that they're not all tangled up into a big old mess. And then once you're sure of it, we're gonna move ahead to putting them on. I have all these numbered, so it should be easy enough for us to figure out. We'll get our number one. Get my second marked one, two, and then the third, right here. Number three. And then, of course, just make sure that they're all nice and secured so they're not flopping around, potentially causing an issue. Let's go back over to the fuse box here, open it up, we remember where the fuse is gonna go. Get our 15-amp, double-check to make sure it's not blown. This looks like it's in really good condition. If it looks like it's burnt, replace it. Grab onto it, and then put it right back into that number 41 spot there next to the number 10. Press it all the way in.

Make sure you cover your box when you're done. This is very important. So, now we're just gonna start up the vehicle. What you might notice when you first go to attempt to start it is it's gonna crank for a long period of time before it actually does turn over. The reason for that is because we don't have any fuel pressure in the system yet. Let's go ahead and start it. Not bad.