Looks like my Mach 1 has developed the notorious head tick. Its not present when you first start the car up, but after you drive it and let the engine warm up to operating temp it ticks like a **** at idle. Seems to be coming from the driver's side head cylinder closest to the driver. I put a wooden stick there and used it like a stethoscope and you can hear the ticking noise on that cylinder. The other cylinders don't make the ticking noise when putting the wooden stick there and listening. The car has just under 20,000 miles and no warranty. What would you guys do at this point? I'm debating getting rid of the car, but I would like to keep it seeing as I've put a ton of money into it these past 4,000 miles of ownership (new clutch, synthetic fluids, catalytic converter, custom grabber pony shift ****, mgw sts, new tires, etc.) Cars shouldn't have these issues at 20k miles.

 

make sure the plugs are tight, a loose plug will make it sound like a rod knocking.

 

+1! The fact that your car is an '04 makes it rather unlikely that it has the head tick, since this was addressed early in the '03 production run.

I had a similar situation develop with my stock motor, and it turned out to be the spark plugs in the two cylinders closest to the firewall on both sides had loosened up, and were rattling around.

Also, don't confuse a valvetrain tick with a fuel injector tick. The fuel injectors on these motors are quite loud to begin with, and if they start going bad, they can create quite a racket!

 

I dont think it would be a spark plug. The car only has 20k miles, how would the spark plugs come loose? It only seems to happen after the car heats up to operating temp or after WOT when there is extra heat during idle. I drove the car today on a rather cooler morning and there was no tick at all. I didnt shift past 2,200 RPM though. I'm considering installing the cooling mod to see if it fixes the issue, but I will also insure that the sparkplug for cylindar #8 is not loose.

 

LOL! Ford 32 valve modular motors are notorious for having spark plugs come loose, back out, or shoot right out of the head!

 

Why are you going to check just one, if your going to check any of them at all, fyi the blow out plug is not a random thing but has happened to thousands of cars including mine, so many that the owners are considering a class action suit.

 

Because cylinder #8 is the only one making the tick sound. Like I said before, I used my home-made stethoscope and listened to each cylinder. I've had two other mustangs 00-04 and never had an issue with spark plugs.

 

I just had to have my heads rebuilt* in my 04 mach, but I have quite a few more miles... I would just say make sure your 100% sure it's the heads before you get rid of it!

 

How much did the rebuild cost you Kenny? I have the car at Ford right now for diagnosis so we can figure out exactly what is causing the head tick. I'm hoping it wont have to be rebuilt. If so I'll give Ford HQ a call and see if they will cover some of the cost, seeing as the car has very low mileage. When i had my 04 GT i had the starter go out at 33k miles and the dealer wanted to charge me $600 to fix it, so I called Ford HQ and they covered $500 of it.