chuckleguts

qdeezie, how do you know these phasers are not, say, Dorman phasers with the number machined off?

2) Regarding phasers, I love my Ford, but I have a bit of a problem with Ford charging such a premium price for the phasers seeing that the engine had a poor design from the factory with the oil pump, tensioner seals and phasers.....and to a lesser degree the VCT solenoids. I did some digging around and found that Standard Techsmart Part Number S21001 appeared to be the OEM unit with the part number machined off. I ordered two of them and sure enough, that is what I saw. Also, I noticed that Melling phasers appear to be OEM with the part number machined off as well, but are priced higher than the Standard brand units.

qdeezie

I've seen over the years some aftermarket parts will match the OEM part in appearance, fit and function, but will curiously have machining marks on it where the part number is usually located on the OEM part. That was my starting point in my search. Also, I've had really good success with Standard's Techsmart line so I figured it was worth investigating. Admittedly, I am not exactly the biggest fan of their non-Techsmart stuff for complex applications, but the Techsmart stuff has been rock solid.

When I pulled up images of the OEM phasers, there were two series of numbers on the front of it that I did not see on any other phaser. One number was the part number and there was another number. I did some exhaustive digging around and looking at images of other brands of phasers and did not see any other phaser that had this same appearance (with regards to having two series of numbers.) On the S21001, that "other number" is still on the phaser. The other phasers I've seen only had one series of numbers where the OEM has two.

dukedkt442

While no expert, I spent enough time inside mine to come to this conclusion: locking out the phasers without fixing the root cause of their failures (oil pressure/flow), will only result in a less powerful, fuel guzzling truck that still has oil-starvation issues. Upgraded/new parts will go another 150k miles or more, which is enough "bulletproofing" for me; this past time doing the work was the last time I'll ever do the job, whether it needs it or not.