I just had my first issue with rough ideling. 54,500 miles on the truck and at idle the engine isn't steady and seems to hesitate on accelerations. Is 7 years the norm for a coil pack? Took the plugs out and they seemed to be good. Mass air was clean too..

 

Coil packs fail for a variety of reasons, so no real "wear out" period.

My '94 4.0l coil pack is still going strong, 20 years and 320k.


Generally if you heat up a failing coil it will start to operate even worse, you can use a heat gun or hair dryer to do that test.

You have a Duratec 2.3l in a 2007 Ranger, so only 1 coil pack.
Were spark plugs gapped correctly, should be about .052 I think.

Your description of running issue also fits a vacuum leak, and it is a much more common problem.
2.3l uses a long PCV Valve vacuum hose these commonly crack at the elbows.

If you unplug the IAC valve while engine is warmed up and idling the idle should drop to about 500rpms, or engine may stumble and die, either is fine, it means no vacuum leak, if idle stays higher then you have a leak.

 

The truck started up and ran like crapoolah Tuesday morning before I left for work, I took the E3 plugs out and put the oem oldies back in and it ran fine... The threads on the E3's seemed to be flattened, like they were worn down some. I did a lookey lou under the front wheel to see if I could see the pvc valve... but as luck would have it I got plenty pis'd with the fact I had to look under the engine to fine it... So far its running great, even with the air on.... I'll check that hose and valve when I get more time to pull the wheel off jack up the car and get busy on it...I was bouncing around on the web and read on some other forum that Ford had a one time offer to change the pvc valve if you car was under 60,000 miles...Anyone here of that???

 

Id bet its the plugs Ford motors never do well with anything but motor craft some autolites do ok but for the most part Id stick with OEM i buy the at advanced for about $2 a plug so it won't break the bank on a tuneup.

 

Yeah, its running great now. I even took them out of my Mustang and but the oem back in. Those threads looks like they were galled up to but not as bad.
Thanks for the info...