j20brett

I get where you are coming from, but you see plenty of folks having chain rattles at 70k and up. Fortunately, mine made it to about 150k before it started. And its a crapshoot for when it starts, but changing the oil regularly (not according to the oil life indicator crap) certainly helps. That timing chain is loooong, it is going to stretch. No amount of maintenance can prevent that. Plus, none of us knows what the design life of the timing system was from the ford engineers. And 95% reliability, compared to what? At what mileage is this percentage based on?

All that said, the oil was changed in mine about every 5k miles, with mobil 1 synthetic. And mine still ended up failing/stretching. The OP is looking to buy a used eco, with zero knowledge of the maintenance that was done, or the regularity of it. Its not a scare the guy away thing, its more a buyer be aware thing.

Taggart

My daily driver is a 2011 3.5 Ecoboost with 165,000 miles on the meter. To date, I've replaced spark plugs twice, a malfunctioning coil under warranty, a malfunctioning oil pressure sensor, and the water pump (the last two within the past year). No timing chain problems, no turbo problems. I change the oil when the truck tells me to and follow the maintenance schedule for all other items. So there's a benchmark for you.

13XLTEco

[QUOTE=j20brett;6204842]Find out if its had the timing chain and cam phasers changed out. If not, they will be in your not too distant future, to the tune of over $4k. You'll never know how well/often it was maintained, so the rest is a crapshoot. Unless the dealer has the service paperwork to back it up. Turbos should be fine.[/QUOT

The percentage of timing chain/phaser replacements vs trucks sold is very small.

Piranhaz

I would like to thank all of you for your responses. I went and looked at the truck yesterday. Sounded great upon startup and drove down the rode beautifully. I liked everything about the truck when I saw it but without having the history of the maintenance I was concerned. As I was looking the truck over when the salesman went inside, I decided to see if the original owners manual was still in the glove box (this was a one-owner vehicle so I assumed it would be). As I pulled the manual out I noticed a sheet of paper folded up between the pages. To my surprise, it was a list of all the oil changes and maintenance from when the owner bought it new. I didn't read every single entry, but I did see they did plugs at 97K. At least I know the guy took care of the truck (which you can also tell by the interior and exterior of the truck).

I'll post some pics when I get it home Thursday. All I can do is hope I don't have any problems with it. And if I do, I'll deal with it. Nothing is for certain on a used truck.

I'm back in the saddle again :-)

diegoo.jayjay

That's awesome! I always say the good trucks are held on to and most of the used is junk, especially with low miles. You most likely found one of the good ones of the owner kept those records.

Let me recommend SimplyAuto. It's an app I use and I log everything on my truck, gas fill ups, services, and its backed up to google.

Piranhaz

I will check it out. I normally just put all my stuff in an app called Colornote, but it's just plain text.

sholxgt

Congrats! Looking forward to the pics.

mpittmann

The 3.5 EB's do have their issues but they may by slightly over rated.. The internet has a tendency to do that. My father in law has a 2011 EB and has had pretty good luck with it. A few warranty items in the first 60k but really no out of pocket expenses until he hit 160k and had to replace his timing chain. Even after that he is still very happy with trouble free nature he's experienced with the truck and is planning on keeping it many more years. So much so that he's even looking into getting the cab corners and rocker panels all replaced (thanks to the salt belt...)

Sounds like you got yourself a clean and well maintained truck!

Piranhaz

I'm with you. There are two types of trucks in MN, the rusted ones, and the ones that will rust, LOL!!

So is there a tell-tale when I will know that the chain needs to be replaced before actually causing catastrophic damage? I'll have this one for awhile so a little preventative maintenance might be good.

mpittmann

Generally the first sign is a cold start rattle. However, it seems that a lot of people deal with this for a while before actually replacing it.