huntnrig

The service manager at the dealer told me yesterday that the TSB 14-0194 has been removed from the system and is no longer being authorized or covered on these trucks at this time. Can anyone confirm or refute this?

He said searches in oasis for affected vin #'s will no longer yield that TSB result as in Ford rescinded it because they know now that it's not working for most of the people who've had the fix.

snakebit95

I have a good feeling that Ford knows what is occurring with this issue. Any company that investigates their complaints, knows their issues in the field. The liability and expense of the "fix" is probably the hold-up. I would be curious to know if there were any significant changes to the 2015 3.5L Ecoboost engine in comparison to the previous generation. The liability and expense of the "fix" might be so high, that they make the "fix" a rolling change into a new model release and let time cover-up the early Ecoboost customer noise. I have seen it happen too many times, and all manufacturers are guilty of it!!

MustangJim21

I have a 2011 ecoboost. Bought the truck new, and have taken to the dealer for all oil changes except 1 that I did on my own. I used the trucks on board oil life monitor to determine the oil change intervals. Once iit was down to 10% i would have the oil changed.

My truck has 51,000 miles on it, and just last week it started to give me troubles. Symptoms were lack of power, not wanting to accelerate, not wanting to hold 6th gear, and shift points were all over the place, but no CEL. This lasted just about 2 weeks and the CEL finally came on. Sure enough P0016 popped up.

My truck is now at the dealer having the timing chain replaced under warranty. It will be ready this afternoon. I'm anxious to get it back, and see how it runs. Should be like new!

I thought I would keep this truck forever, but now I'm seriously considering trading this truck in on another vehicle.

ford15012

I have a 2012 Ecoboost with on 11,200 miles on it, so no timing chain issue and I would like to avoid this problem. Is it a general consensus that regular 3000 mile oil change intervals and use of high quality full synthetic oil may prevent excessive timing chain wear?

Cord

Some have put that theory forward, but there has been no proof of this being a cure-all fix. Although I agree that oil dilution can contribute to the chain wear, I have not had a problem with oil dilution because my daily trips have been long enough to boil the fuel out of the oil. Also, like others, the rattle came back a few weeks after my chain was replaced. There is no way oil took out the replacement chain in that time. This means there has to be something else happening.

huntnrig

Much like Cord, they did the chain on my truck too but the rattling noise was back within a week so it's definitely not a stretched chain, again...

I believe they need to replace the tensioner and guides and probably the sprockets at the same time. My engine made the noise almost daily.

huntnrig

Did they change it with synthetic or semi-synthetic blend? Did you ever get the cold start timing chain rattle?

MustangJim21

According to my paperwork, the dealer used Motorcraft synthetic blend oil. No, I never noticed any cold start timing chain rattle.

Also my truck is my daily driver, and has only seen towing duty twice in its life. One time pulling a 8x16 enclosed trailer when i moved out of my apartmet, and once this summer when I towed a dump trailer with 3 yards of soil.

Might commute to work is a mix of 55mph and 40 mph zones with a few stoplights a long the way. I am easy on my vehicles, and never beat on my truck.

I took my truck to the dealer on Friday morning. They called that afternoon around 4 pm to say the timing chain needed to be replaced and it would be covered by warranty. My service rep stated they had been working on the truck all day, but it wouldn't be ready until Saturday since it was a 10 hour job. I say no problem, and they ask if i need a loaner vehicle; i decline and say if it'll be ready on Saturday, i don't need a loaner.

I get a call Saturday morning (around 9:30am) from the service departments secretary. She informs me that they need to keep my truck, and they will arrange a loaner for me, but she didn't have any specifics on my truck. I'm going to call my service rep to get more information. I wonder if they found more damage to the engine or it its just taking longer than expected to repair.

Today (Sunday) i took a ride over to the dealer. I peeked into the garage and saw that my truck is sitting on the lift, up in the air.

huntnrig

I believe this is part of the problem using semi-synthetic and following the oil life monitor. It's too long an interval and too low quality of oil and it's what Ford said to use until TSB 14-0194 calls for full synthetic.

What I find interesting is you've had this issue come up with your truck but you've never had the cold start rattle which seems to be a really common symptom of this issue.

The TSB was 9 hours on my invoice.

snakebit95

Putting a new chain on worn sprockets will make the new chain wear very quickly to match the worn sprockets. Mixing worn and new "meshing" parts is generally a bad thing to do. It usually results in inadequate contact area / support from the worn parts; not to mention surface finish and surface treatments being inadequate and outside the original specifications.