I just did a full timing rebuild on an 04 F150 and I wanted to throw this out there for others because it might help diagnose problems. I did not see it anywhere in searches.

I bought the truck and have many friends with the 5.4 3V that filled me in on the phaser problems so I was not too worried when I heard the slight diesel sound. Then I noticed a little grunt sound when I would hit the accelerator when the truck was warmed up. It was not bad, just a little barely audible grunt sound for maybe a quarter of a second. It sounded like a bolt being drug across the edge of something and I assumed that the engine torque was twisting something and rubbing on the firewall. Wrong. It was the timing chain tensioner failure that was resulting in a slapping of the timing chain and for a fraction of a second it would rub on the front cover. I caught it in time and it only made a small rub spot. I inspected the old tensioner and could squish it easily in by hand, the other was solid to push against, but would slowly collapse.

The factory OEM tensioner failure is common and is the cause of the phaser ticking in many cases, but this might be another indication to look for on a used F150. Just let the truck warm up and listen for the noise when accelerating from a stop. I know that the cam phaser issue has been beat to death, but this might be an indication to look for if you are buying a truck to determine if timing needs to be done sooner.



Failed Tensioner


Fun.

 

Dang, you really tore EVERYTHING out didn't you lol

 

Yes, and even then it was a PITA. Only want to be in there once as long as I own the truck so I did the oil pump (melling M340), water pump, timing, VCT, inspected rollers and cam, spark plugs, coils, all gaskets and seals, and did a transmission flush.

I am not quite sure why ford felt 18" of space in front of the engine was a good idea when the rest of the engine is smashed up against the firewall so tight that you can barely get a finger back there to tighten the valve cover bolts.

 

So their techs can get that sweet, sweet labor money

 

Is your truck on a body lift? I have been thinking of doing a body lift and may help with removing engine parts. My last f150 pwas a PITA to change the timing components.. I even got a scar out of it..

 

Going through this currently on my 06 4.6 engine now. New oil pump and chain tensioners. I was overwhelmed with the job at first, but it seems fairly simple now - But I only have the 2v engine.

 

No, but that might help. The AC lines were all in the way of getting the valve cover off, and i had to pull pretty hard to shift them up and out enough to get the cover off. Could have drained the system, but it was just recharged when I bought the truck so I wanted to avoid it if possible. Having a short body lift would probably help a lot with that.

All of my knuckles are scared up right now. I had to only use the blue gloves because with regular work gloves it was impossible to get my hand into the oil pan to get the oil suction tube off the pump and a few other things.

 

The only thing that I worry about were the torque specs for the cam journals. I have only worked on steel head and block engines for the most part, and never tore into something with an aluminum head this deep. I checked, rechecked, verified, and torqued the cam bolts like 4 times because it just felt too light. Everything else was fine and same as everything that I have done in the past. Plugging in some of the dang electrical plugs can be a pain because they do not lock back together sometimes. My oil temperature sensor plug popped out when test driving and made my check engine come on with a P0198 code.

 

Would you mind sharing those torque specs with me ? I need to torque the cam caps down as well. It seemed to me that they are very light on torque as well, but there has to be space in the for oil to flow.