I've got an '06 5.4L with 210,000 miles. A few weeks back I noticed a slight vibration at idle, then the check engine light came on right about the same time. I got my code reader out and it gave me a P0016 code. I took the truck to my local mechanic. It needs a new timing chain kit. From the service report..."The engine ran normally with no misfires or abnormal knocking noises.
The technician then performed a test drive while monitoring VCT data. Bank 1 timing was found to be off by 15 degrees, but off-idle and while driving, both VCT banks synchronized properly. This indicates a likely broken or cracked timing guide or faulty phaser on Bank 1."

Cost to repair is $4500 or around that mark. I know we can't tell the future, but what's the likelihood that any damage was done to the pistons (or elsewhere) by the timing chain being the way it is? Am I at the point where I'm going down a rabbit hole and spending this money is a waste? Is spending this money a pretty safe bet that the truck will be just fine? I need some thoughts, experiences and opinions.

Thank you in advance.

 

$4500 to change a timing chain and maybe a phazer, Gawt damn! They must be charging $500 per hour now, LOL.

 

I'd get a 2nd opinion. If I were spending $4500 I'd replace/rebuild the entire engine on a 20 year old, 200,000 mile truck. Or sell it for parts.

 

NO. There have been countless stories of people having timing jobs and then have continued problems. you might get lucky, but not a safe/good bet.

if you really like the truck and plan to keep for years, get a new reman. if not, i’d sell it and move on. or if you can find a used engine that you ‘know’ is good and can get it cheap, consider that. no way i’d drop almost $5k on a timing job.

 

Yea no way I’m paying that. Thats insane. And if he does go with a new reman, he needs to give it a good inspection while out of the bay. I just had a big name auto mechanic company try to make me think my valve cover gasket was bad and leaking. They said they removed all coils and spark plugs and inspected everything, oil in the plug tubes, the whole 9. No they didn’t. lol. Cause if they did, they would’ve learned that moving my spark plugs from the cylinder 8 misfire to any other cylinder, it moved the code to that cylinder. I moved cylinder 8 to cylinder 2 then started getting misfire code for cylinder 2. Would ya look at that?! One bad spark plug, the guy I called for a second opinion said my compression was just fine! Did you even do a compression test?? The “oil” they were referring to was just coolant that spewed everywhere when I was doing fuel injectors, had a hose in my way; that was my bad. And it wasn’t IN the tubes, it was puddled on top of the coil boot. That’s how I know they only removed maybe a couple coils from a couple cylinders to do all their testing.