im new to the forum, ive been a ford guy my whole life always wanted an f150 well im 20 and finally aved up the money to get me an 04 crew cab lariat. a lot better than my previous 97 expedition.... but anyways it looked good andeverything cheked out when i bought it a few weeks ago but now it sounds like a diesel at hot idle..... its cam phasers or lifters, according to everyhting ive seen on google. how much time do i have before i do severe damage to my engine? i need my truck but i dont want to mess up the engine and be in a bigger money pit. and my money is tight so whats the cheapest way out i can go and it be fixed right? any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

could be phasers/timing related but it could be an exhaust leak at the manifold.

 

How many miles are on it? If you catch it early enough and replace the vct solenoids on both banks with the new updated ones (smaller hole) it should help with oil flow. Also only put a motor craft filter on the engine with either synthetic or synthetic blend. The dieseling noise you gear is most likely your timing chain slapping around and hitting your guides. The tensioners and phasers all work off the same oil I think that is fed from the vct solenoids.. I'm getting ready to replace all that crap myself next week so I've been doing a lot of reading.

 

please let me know how that goes, and how hard it is to do yourself and my truck has 170xxx miles on the body and the motor and tranmission replaced by ford have 35xxx on them so its fairly new

 

Why were the motor and trans replaced by Ford 35K miles ago? And if it's a new motor and trans I think I'd lean more towards passenger side manifold leaking which is a cheaper repair job.

 

Agreed if it was a new motor and trans from ford you would think they would replace all the crap that fails. Unless its not a "new" one...check the manifold first obviously.

 

Before you start throwing parts at it, do you know what weight of oil is in there? If not, I would do an oil change with a good quality synthetic 5w30. The 5.4 3v's timing components do not like the recommended 20w crap.

 

that's a good point. with a new motor, they'd need new studs and gaskets for the manifold... so i'm guessing it should be pretty obvious by looking. the manifold would have likely cracked or warped and if you can hear it at hot idle it should be bad enough to easily see the black crud somewhere maybe on the gaskets themselves

 

yall are awesome i didnt expect this much input, and idk why the motor was replace, but it is a new motor i got the paper work on it and i think the transmission was just rebuilt the guy said it had a bump to it when it shifted and he didnt like the way it felt, i got paper work on that too. but i am going to change the oil soon, ive read about running the 5w30 instead of the 5w20 and i didnt even think about the exhaust manifold...

 

I did the 30w oil and it did nothing. Look up on you tube about the vct solenoids and how they work and cam phasers and how they work... actually alot of people put their truck with the "dieseling" noise on YouTube too. You could compare.