The Alien

Yep you are right (you were right from the beginning ), I just ordered them to rockauto and waiting for them this week.

By the way I needed to open the timing cover to replace the broken parts so I didn't waste money with the phaser kit.

My opinion that this issue is not only one thing but a combination of them.

I read too some F150 forums and some owners, as you said, they fixed it with the solenoids and others not. And I read the same exact symptoms: stalling at 1.300 1500 rpm, knocking noise, if accelerating it disappears or restarting the engine.

when they didn't fix with the solenoids they found a oil clog on the oil timing duct.

so the issue is always the same: clog or low pressure for any reason, the oil doesn't flow correctly inside the phasers causing an "intermittent" movement of the cam phaser; the chain goes in resonance at that rpm and that's it.


To confirm that, menawhile I'm waiting for the phasers, I changed the oil with the 10W40 as ford TSB suggested and now every noise disappeared.

this doesn't mean the oil fixed the issue but for sure it restored a little bit the correct oil flow on the timing phasers.

now the engine works perfectly except for an "uneven" engine run at 1.300 / 1.500 (it was doing that also before)

so I suppose that even the thicker oil helped the phaser, the camshaft is still not in the correct timing position at those rpm.

Let's see with the new solenoids and I'll let you know if also this secondary issue (very minimal) will disappear.

The Alien

GRRRRR...

Solenoids replaced but nothing changed.

The noise almost disappeared when I started to use the 10W40 but it's still was doing the noise when very hot.

and the new solenoids didn't get better.

so now, the only thing that remain is an oil passage somewhere, maybe on the camshaft timing ducts...

mike8

Hey hopefully you found out what was wrong. I have the same issue. Took off the front cover on Friday and found the same guide broken, engine had a little sludge. I figure my only option is to drop the oil pan pick out the remaining pieces of the guide cause I only found about a quarter of it, clean the oil pump screen or replace it and flush out the engine 3-4 times after I change the phasers, guides, tensioners, chain and the vct solenoids. Any advice is welcome. After reading your post Im almost ready to pull the motor and replace her with a lower mile motor and put my new timing kit in it. Ill try to post some picks of my engine later.

mike8

here's a few pics