Update on my 5.4l tick
 

Well I still havnt done any work to my truck yet, because I still have yet to pinpoint the ticking noise. Well anyway, I didn't take notice to this but when I first start the truck, hot or cold, there is no ticking noise, but a second after startup the ticking starts again at all RPMs, and if you put your ear on the exhaust end you can hear the tick slightly. So if these symptoms are present what do you think it could be? I tried unplugging the VTC, seafoam, thicker synthetic oil and there has been no difference is sound. Also, the truck doesn't seem to have any loss of power. Thank you for your help

2005 5.4L 160k

Not sure, but I noticed with mine, if I have the air on or defrost on at start up I don't get the tick or chain slap, but if I start without it on I get the noise.... So wondering if it times the engine differently when cold as well as with air/defrost on and therefore cause the timing to tighten the chain in these scenarios? Just a hypothesis that I've been milling around.

Could be noisy injectors, they are known for that.

Mine has the ticking and noise as well (149,000miles) bought it a couple of months ago and it has been driving me nuts. Used a stethoscope and really couldn't pinpoint anything so I bought all 23 lash adjusters, followers, phasers and timing components all OEM and will be installing them next weekend. Really just want to do this once and since I couldn't pinpoint the problem, I figured I might as well change them all out since at 149,000 miles, they probably need to be changed anyway. When I start to take it apart I will probably find out it was just a loose spark plug or something else that would have taken just 5 minutes to fix, that's my luck. I will post results and pics when done. Good luck on yours and let us know how it works out.
Tom