lawntruck

I have a 2004 with the notorious Triton 5.4. I thought I had an issue with the timing chain tensioner and/or cam phaser due to the start up noise and rough idle. A ford mechanic I know listened to it and said the engine may be done as it could be the cams are wiped. As advised, pulled the valve cover and one of the cam caps and sure enough it had scratches on the cap and cam. He said that the engine should be replaced as repair is not cost effective and that I could continue to drive it until it gets worse to where it will not idle.

Any experience on how long these go until that point? I bought it at 105K and put on 5K. It had the rough idle then, but I did not know about the Triton issues (I replaced the plugs and cleaned the throttle body to no effect). It has not thrown any engine lights yet and the rough idle does not seem to have gotten that much worse in the 5K.

Also, as I decide to replace the engine or sell as is, any experience with the different rebuilds for sale on line? Most claim to have fixes in for the Triton issues, but are they really fixed or just improved? (IE will this be good money after bad)

Eric Kleven

Same answer as on the other board. ;-)

Odyssey11

If it is a phaser issue then you can easily fix this! Are the cams, lifters, roller rockers in good shape? Assuming you have removed the valve covers already so you can now easily remove and replace with the (fixed)cam phasers. Also could be the vct solenoid. Any of these items can be looked at and replaced and should help you get more mileage out of the engine. A new engine will run around 3500$. I would reach out to the guys a SP Precision they make a great reman engine with upgraded parts that are know to fail on the ford modular engines.

https://spprecision.com/