No. It is a strategy programmed by Ford in case of a flooded engine. Holding the accelerator to WOT while cranking the engine shuts off the fuel injectors, so the engine will not start. It's also a good idea to do this at every oil change. Cranking like this for about five seconds will get oil through the filter and pressurize the entire oiling system.

 

yes camshafts need to come off. Just use a sharpie to mark the phaser's relation to the chain and the cam's relation to the first cap. You also need to wedge chain in place before you start removing anything.

 

I have a 2005 F150 screw with the Triton 5.4 L, 120,000 on the odo. Its a beautiful truck and I want to keep it. My issues started with loss of power and a miss at hard acceleration around 80,000 miles. Multiple flashing check engine lights only showed misses on various cylinders. Changed the spark plugs at 90,000 (got taken to the cleaners on that one). Replaced all of the COPs myself at 100,000. Upgraded Bosch fuel injectors at 110,000 (did that myself and it made no difference at all). I had a left side melt down on the cat so I had both cats changed at 110,000 also. The cats made the biggest difference in performance but still didn't completely fix the problem. So then I found out about the cam phaser issue. Geese! Just when I thought what else is there???! So now I have changed the cam phaser solonoids. This made a pretty large difference but there is still a slight miss at hard acceleration. So now I'm committing to changing the cam phaser sprockets. I think my timing chains are good as I don't get a lot of noise (just the performance issue) and I really don't want to or have time to tear the entire front of the engine down. I'm trying to order parts for this next round of repairs and I don't want to order anything I can't install. So here's my question.... Can I change the timing chain tensioners while changing just the cam phaser sprockets? And of course by only removing the valve covers....

 

You cannot reach the timing chain tensioners without removing the timing cover.

 

Well I am now committed to the whole job. From what I read it's kind of foolish not to do the entire job. looks like getting the valve covers off is the hardest part of the entire process. Is it OK to unplug and pull that computer on the firewall? It looks as if getting to that passenger side valve cover would be a lot easier without that and the wiring in the way.

 

Yes, its fine to remove the computer from the firewall. Disconnect the battery, unplug the computer and remove, you may also get lucky and be able to move the AC lines out of the way and get the valve cover off, I was not that lucky and had to disconnect the lines and move them. After that, the vc came off really easy.

Good luck
Tom