Okay I got it all apart and got the cams off and out. In test fitting the phasers, I noticed that the alignment marks don't match the illustration. They appear to be backwards. The driver side cam, with the phaser loosely placed according to it's key in the back, and the cam turned to the correct person (doing this all outside of the car), the chain mark is not facing right, it's facing left. On the passenger side, it's opposite. Are the phasers reversible ? Im not sure how to proceed.

I just reread this and feel it doesn't make much sense. In the pictures provided earlier in this thread, it shows the cylinder 5 cam lobes facing almost near a 3 o'clock position and cylinder 1 cams near 11. In orienting the cams this way out of the car, the phaser alignment marks don't match up with the pictures. The driver side mark is more to the left, while the passenger side is more to the right, as if the two were backwards or something. I am not sure if when the chain is drawn tight it twists the phasers into alignment or not, I just know that the marks aren't close to matching the picture. If I want them to match the picture, cylinder 5s two intake lobes are pointing more towards 5 o'clock, or at least part way pushing down the valves. The cylinder 1 lobes are th same way, but not at the same position.

On another note, with the cams off, and all valves closed how hard will it be to turn the crank? I didn't want to chance breaking off plugs so I decided to leave them in. Will it be near impossible to turn it over now? Need to get the crank at 11. (I couldn't do it before because the phasers were turning but the cams weren't, so whenever I moved the crank ever so slightly the cams would stay in place but the phasers would turn.) Removed the chains and cams as it was and then I would try to line up the crank before I put the new stuff on A lot of compression behind it now though I think since the only way air can escape now is through the seals.

 

best if plugs out but if in it will still turn you are just fighting compression . It is crazy not to replace plugs at this point . The ignition system is so touchy on these engines you have to have it first class.
Yes the phasors left and right are the same they just go on 180 degrees from each other .
Get this straight-- passenger side is right ,drivers side is left .no 1 cly is passenger front , no 5 is drivers front.
Do not get confused by the position of the crank keyway versus the crank gear dot. If the crank gear dot at 6 oclock the keyway will be at 11 oclock its a fixed relationship .Use the 6 oclock gear dot as your reference .
If you have same--6 oclock gear dot then cams like the picture the drivers phasor will have the l up,passenger side will have the r up . The right side of each chain must be tight that's the non tensioner side .
Using a lend type crank pulley puller sometimes you need to go buy your own metric case hardened bolts at a good hardware store.

 

I am away from my desk top I will see if my history I can find my alignment pictures .

 

https://www.f150forum.com/f4/phaser-...394758/index2/

 

Yeah those pictures do not match how it will currently go into the engine. The R on mine when the phaser is on correctly looks like the L on the picture. If I make it look like the picture, the lobes aren't the same as pictured. The same is true with the L side except reversed.

If this is normal then there's not a problem, otherwise there's a huge one.

The reason we are not changing plugs is we cannot risk breaking one or more off and having to pull the head i.e. more money, work and downtime. The videos and guides I have seen for extracting and the high probability of breakage isn't worth it to us. It's already cost well over what we wanted to spend now including the cost of a rental for two weeks now because this is their only vehicle.

 

 

It's impossible to know how old they are. The msd coil packs are fairly new so I'd imagine the plugs are, as well. I couldn't see somebody spending all that money on high performance coils and not replacing the plugs.

 

GOOD NEWS! I got the plugs out, with little to no trouble. I was right, they were recently changed. Oh well, might as well do it again while they are out.

I am running into what I hope is the final issue, that may not be an issue. I spent 2 hours today trying to get the timing marks to line up, to no avail.

Keep in mind I had the cams in their locations, but not bolted down via their cam caps yet. I just had the bolts a couple threads in to hold the caps on. None of the lobes were pushing down any valves yet.

From the picture you can see that the dot is a six o'clock, and the chain mark is lined up with it. At the top though, I cannot get the L (driver side) arrow between the two black marks. If I do, the chain is extremely tight (so tight that I can't get the tensioner arm or tensioner on it). The best I could get it, is how it's pictured. The same applied to the R (passenger side). They are both lined up in the same spot on the chains, as you can see from the pictures. This one, if I line up the R arrow perfectly between the two marks, the guide side of the chain is super sloppy and the tensioner arm side is extremely tight.





In putting it the way I have it now, I was able to keep the guide side tight (passenger side has no slack, driver side has not even an 1/8" of slack on the guide side), and was able to tighten down the tensioner side. I had them loose in the cam towers and they lined up, but as soon as I tightened the caps down for the cams, they shifted and no longer lined up.

Is where they are located now adequate, or do they absolutely need to be in between the two links perfectly centered? If so, I may have another issue somewhere else that's preventing me from getting the chains lined up, as if I do it that way the tensioner arm side is super tight on both sides, and impossible to assemble.

NOTE: I am NOT sure why the forums flipped all the images 180, but when looking at them, imagine they are oriented the correct way.

 

Okay guys, please help. I got it all back together today, left the crank sensor unplugged until the car built pressure, then plugged it back in. It fired right up, was beautiful and quiet. We let it run to temperature, and the ticking noise came back, and the rough idle also came back. The oil pressure also dropped again and the check engine light came on. I'm not sure what to do now. Everything under the cover is brand new.

In response to my last post, I ended up getting the cams lined up by removing the chain from the phaser and turning g the cams a bit in their needed direction. Everything went together smoothly after that.

Now this problem.... So frustrating. When we backed it out, we did notice that there was a lot of oil on the ground, so it's possible that it is low on oil, but it didn't look like it when I checked it.

Also, we didn't drop the pan as we didn't have the resources to do it, but I did make a special screen tool that reached all the way to the back of the pan and pulled everything in it towards me. There were a lot of larger broken pieces, but nothing super super small.

What can I do at this point? Please help.