loughman

Does anyone know if Ford has made a permanent fix, i.e. redesign to the cam phaser noise and VCT solenoiod issue that seem to have plagued the 4.6 3V and 5.4 3V engines? Just wondering if those of us with EB and 5.0 will face 2X the problems down the road....being that we have 2X as many cams and cam phasers.

I don't know if there is a direct correlation, but reading through some posts on various websites, perhaps there is a connection to sludge and then plugged VCT solenoids, and accelerated wear on the cam phasers, resulting in noise, and I suspect loss of performance or economy, possibly both.

I only have 1000 miles on my 5.0 but already thinking of going with 5,000 mile oil change interval despite what the oil life monitor displays. Have done 5000 mile oil changes on all our cars over the years, using OEM or better filters and appropriate viscosity of Mobil 1. Have never had a problem and we have a 2005 Toyota RAV4 (has variable valve timing) with 105,000 miles, and it runs like a top, nice and quiet, etc.

It boggles my mind that in todays day any manufacturer still has issues with engine noises or lubrication, be it chain tensioners, cam phasers etc. Perhaps some engine noises are due to improper maintenance, i.e. wrong viscosity or too long of a service interval, but they all can't be from that. I've seen pictures posted and the internals of most of the engines of F150s with 4.6 and 5.4 cam phaser issues seems very clean.

Does anyone know for sure if Ford addressed this issue in the new generatioin of engines....even if they say they did, I'm guessing we won't know for sure for several years as people start to pile on the miles.

My expectation today is that any engine that is not abused and has the manufacturers service recommendations followed should make it to 150,000 with no issues, I mean afterall, they nearly all advertise 90,000 or better tune up interval, the engine internals should hold up to several tune up intervals with no problems, right??

amascio

This is a very good question! Your observations are solid and I can tell you that oil change intervals do affect internal devices you wouldn't normally think of.

Timing chains, the associated tensioners, actuating solenoids and the oil passages they use ( this includes hoses as in a BMW vanos unit) can all be negatively impacted with overly long OCIs. Varnish and sludge are the culprits here and changing oil in the 5-6k range helps keep all this stuff in clean working order for little money.

Sure doesn't hurt to stack the deck in your engines favor!!!

loughman

Well, without a definitive answer where someone can point to a TSB or other Ford document that really fixed the issue, I will go with a 5000 mile oil change interval. Might be wasting $50 or so for a filter and 8 quarts of Mobil 1 every 5000 miles vs 10000 miles, but I'd rather do that then face $2000 worth of cam phasers, etc at 60,000-75,000 miles. It certainly won't hurt the engine. Heck 20+ years ago when I started using Mobil 1, I stayed with 3000 mile oil change intervals, knowing that was a waste of $$. 5000 miles works for me. I think clean oil is critical with the timing chains and tensioners, etc. I'll let you all know in 20 years how it works out with regard to engine longevity....

TJPlatinumEB

I had a 2005 FX4 that I drove for over 80k miles without a single issue to speak of. I always ALWAYS used Motorcraft filter and Motorcraft synthetic blend oil every 4-6k miles. Never had so much as one tiny noise other than the usual.

I know of about 10 people locally who had solenoid or phaser issues and every single one of them were either not using the MC filter or the MC oil. None of them were using both MC oil and filter. I don't doubt that plenty of people use high end synthetic oil have no issues, but the people I saw all were not following Ford's recommendation on MC filter and oil.

I will stick to the recommended MC 5w-30, MC filter, and will do it every 5k miles at MOST. I will be very surprised if I have any issues following Ford's recommendations.

chuckster48

Cam phaser noises were fixed on the 08 models. I have 210,000 miles on an 04 and although it has a cam phaser click, it still runs fine. 4-5000 mile oil changes all the time.