OK so I bought this 2005 screw King ranch in may and immediately became concerned about the intermittent ticks, knocks, and rattles I was hearing. I started reading all the forum sites and had come to the conclusion that I had noisy cam phasers since I usually don't hear the noises until the engine has reached operating temperature. I recently was told by a certified technician that the noises I am hearing are probably more related to the timing chain. This actually makes more sense because I do have a terrible startup rattle and I get a rattle when letting off the gas under acceleration. My question is, how common is it to have timing chain rattles in a 2005 5.4 liter triton at 96K miles?? What is the best course of action as far as replacement parts? How can I be certain that this is the problem? What else should I do to keep this from happening in the next 96k miles? Thanks!!

 

You are most likely have broken timing chain guides, causing the chains to slap during start up. If I were you I would replace everything. Phasers, chains and tensioners.


This is what my timing chain cover looked like so I wouldn't wait to long to repair it.

 

Thanks, Fordsilly...I am really disgusted with Ford right now. Why do timing chain guides fail at 96k miles? How many miles were on your truck when you made the repair? What year is your truck? Are there any seals or anything else that I should replace while I have the engine opened up? How can I be sure this won't happen again?

 

Shadetreeboy look for the thread Final Repair guid for cam phasers etc. in this thread. That will answer all of your questions about your options. 100k seems to the lower end of the failure range. I agree with your sentiment though.

I am doing this repair myself as I type this and if all goes will have my truck back on the raod tonight.

 

The only gaskets/seals would be valve cover gaskets and timing cover seal kit.

What I did to prevent this from ever happening again was the livernois phaser lockout kit. Essentially put I aluminum block inside the phaser vane to make it a fixed gear. I love it now, but if you plan on doing this you need to have a SCT tuner or buy to load in a custom tune (to keep the CEL light from coming on at higher rpms.)

Truck runs great and have been getting 1-1.5 better mileage with it (probably the tune)

My truck is an 04 had 127k on it at the time, previous owner did not maintain truck for a year or two when the dips**t son drove it... So I have been playing catch up.

 

Tensioner seals fail chain will slap around breaking guides. Use only ford OE parts I learened the hard way. No problems since