ericantonio

Sweeet, my mechanic is doing my h2o pump and I asked him to send me a pic of my timing chain cause I believe that's the cause of all my problems.

Better, he sent me a video.

Do I win a prize for worst timing chain? 232K miles. Who knows if it ever got replaced.

ReT_SqUiD

hahahah holy cow. How has it not slipped off yet? Just replaced mine. Wasn't quite that bad.

joegeds

I find it interesting how the service manual tells us to measure the loose chain. Rather than measure the distance you can move the middle of the chain with your finger - like you guys are doing in the video/picture, the service manual says to hold the crankshaft with a tool so that it can't move, then with a torque wrench applying 15 lb-ft, move the camshaft one way, mark the top, then move it the other way, mark the top, then measure that distance. If movement is more than 3.175 mm, replace the chain.

BLDTruth

Easiest way is to tell if your timing chain is slacking (before you pull the water pump and timing cover) is to pull the distributor cap and observe the rotor behavior as you move the crankshaft by hand. If you use the timing marks on the harmonic balancer you can get a pretty accurate idea of how many degrees of slack you have.

ericantonio

At least I know when I get it back it'll be somewhat at "baseline" working. So I can remove that piece of the unknown if something else is wrong. I've been trying to do all the "cheap" stuff to fix the hesitation and stuttering and no power going uphill by changing: TPS, IAC, IC, plugs, wires, clean throttle, o2 sensors, clean maf, pcv...all that stuff really didn't do anything but give it a pretty good tune-up.

Man, I had a hard time entering the freeway, it was soooo slow moving from 20 to 50MPH and everyone in the truck can hear a tak-tak-tak-tak-tak-tak when accelerating.

Eventually, I'd LOVE TO get a new refurbished Long Block and replace everything. Or fine a refurbished with most of the things installed. I think that's called a Dressed Long Block? I don't want a racing engine, I just want something normal and lasts long again.

ericantonio

Well....interesting call from mechanic today.

It went like this:

This is nuts, your oil pan gasket is metal, not cork like you and I were expecting. The 2 choices, well, really just 1 choice, is to unbolt the engine, lift it up, and lower the oil pan and add as gasket. That's a choice but I can't really do that at my place.

So second choice, is to lower the oil pan as much as I can (like quarter an inch) and clean it up and use a heavy duty sealant on it, and the put it back on.

I wasn't expecting that metal gasket so it'll take longer than I thought it would.

Wow, so what you guys think? I asked about the sealant and he said that stuff is really really strong. And when you do get an engine rebuilt, it'll be gone anyway but the hard part is getting that seal on correctly the 1st time.

Chris_1

iTrader: (1)

Well, #1 - good thing you went ahead with changing that before it jumped or broke !
Tell him I just did my chain a couple weeks ago and was as surprised as him to find a metal pan gasket. 95 5.0.
What I did was use a razor knife and afew other assorted things (including a rag soaked in brake-clean) to clean the top and bottom of the metal strips as well as the top edge of the pan.
I then applied RTX sealant to the top and bottom of the metal gasket (liberally), put the round loop gasket on the bottom of the t/c cover with RTX in the corners and put it together.
Not a drop of leakage - it's holding tight 2 weeks later, so I'd say it's good.

ericantonio

At 232K miles, it's definitely showing it's age. I think I may actually have the funds for a refurb engine soon. And he's definitely the man to do it. Since I have so many new parts around the block already, it'll be easy to put a new refurb engine in he said. So I'll probably start a new thread with that one. I'll keep this bad boy running til the fall and want to do some good research on online engines or get one from Ford. He said it's not worth it to rebuild that one, just too long and going to be same or more price to get it rebuilt so a longblock would be better.

He also noticed not so great compression as he would start it up. But yeah, the chain man, it was driving me nuts. I think I actually heard it slipping a few times and it sounded like missing a gear shifting when driving a manual car.

BLDTruth

EDIT - wrong thread

ericantonio

This is great info.

Question: The sound of a transmission slipping or a weird humming vibration for a few seconds, is that the sound of the chain slipping or jumping or just totally worn out? Cause man, I can hear a weird zzzzzzzzzz humming that sounds like and feels like I'm driving over some peanuts for about 50 feet and then it stops. I'm thinking that the timing chain kinda adjusting itself from the speed and finally settling in. But all good cause it'll probably cure that and all my timing will finally be all good.