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At about 130k on my 2003 Screw 4x4 5.4 I started hearing a slight tick which, by the time it was 165k turned into a louder tick/knock that finally bothered me enough to take into the dealer to diagnose while I was away for a week and could drop it off for that long. Dealer at first said it sounded like a chain guide and shouldn't be a big deal, which then turned into a big deal once they got the timing cover off and discovered the crank was walking and it was causing my oil pressure to drop. After paying them out the rear to tell me that great news I told them to throw all the loose parts into the bed and I towed it home to swap out engines with a reman instead of paying the 7k quote they gave me. Have the reman in already and I'm putting it all back together, but figured I'd throw up a picture of what I saw on the old engine, the crank position sensor wheel was being pushed into the back of the timing cover and etching out a nice circle about 1/16" inch into the aluminum. Sometimes when I tried starting the truck the starter would grind, probably because of the friction. Sometimes when it started up there would be a weird scraping sound too, which this picture definitely explains...anyways, I bought the truck with 125k on it so I couldn't say what the maintenance was. Didn't have the noise when I bought it and I babied it when I bought it, but I'm sure by then the damage was already done, thrust bearings wore down. I won't dig into the old engine to verify, need to return it for core charge.
09-30-2015, 12:49 AM
Crank Walk
