Just another update, The noise is getting louder and lasting longer. Today I went and looked in the oil fill tube and saw everything was black and looked neglected, I went and did the seafoam in the oil and it made a vsible difference and the oil filter felt much heavier than the one I removed before adding the seafoam. I used motorcraft Synthetic blend 5-20 and a FL820s filter. The noise is still there but quieter now but still there. I crawled under the truck with it running and narrowed it down to the rear lower end portion of the motor near the Torque converter. Is it possible that a torque converter can produce this kind of noise with a loose flywheel bolt? or a bad converter? The transmission was replaced with a ford reman uint at some point in its life. I will pull the flywheel cover tomorrow and look for anything out of place and see where that gets me.

 

any update?

 

i would check to see wether the tick is at crank, or cam speed. the description sounds to me like you are experiencing the start of some bad problems...
had the same symptoms in my 82f150 with 351w and it ended up being #1 rod bearing had chewed into the crank enough to let it slap at bdc. ticks really make me nervous now.

i hope its nothing more than a stud tho man, good luck!
xtof

 

my 2004 with 5.4 is doing the same dam thing! Started with a light tick then it got louder, some days it doesnt do it at all then it will do it again for a week at a time. Then it doesnt do it til the motor is warm, other days it does it t start up and stops when the motor gets warm. I have stainless headers and all my studs are nice and tight so i was thinking motor problem? I was gonna buy new header gaskets and new ARP stainless studs but why spend the money if it is the motor and this junk blws a week from now?

 

dunno if it would work on a 7.3 but on a gasser you can use a laser thermometer thingy and measure the exhaust manifolds at each port... the cyllinder with the problem will read a way different temp than the rest. on my 351w #1 cyllinder was 40*f colder than all the others... and it was deffinately the problem cyllinder.
you can pick up a laser thermometer at harbor freight for 30$

 

I figured I would update this but the truck had a burned #10 piston causing a piston slap. I wound up selling the truck a few weeks ago because I didn't want to put a motor in a rusted 160,000 mile truck

 

see why ticks make me nervous...
just s|-|^7$ and grins... how many miles did you put on the truck while you had it? what oil did you use? do you have a heavy foot?
did you have a pyro on it? do you use any particular fuel brand? or alternative fuel?
xtof

 

Exhaust tick? Have you checked for loose or broken exhaust manifold studs on that side? Pretty common with that engine.

Edit, I see now you said they were all tight. Could still be a leak in the gasket. I'd pull the manifold/header on that side and make sure the flange is flat and reassemble with a new gasket and be sure they are torqued to spec.

 

true.. but he got it sorted out. burnt piston.. and he got rid of the truck... i was only asking for statistical info for the fun of speculating what may have caused the failure.

xtof

 

I only put maybe 1,200 miles on it before I dumped it. It was a former railroad fleet truck with 160,000 miles on it but due to it having a pto for a hydraulic pump its safe to say there was high idle hours on it as well. I never towed with it and I ran all motorcraft oils and filters when I first got it home. Mine was so bad that it used a quart of oil in 500 miles it had no leaks but that's a sign something is very wrong! Im sure quality gas was never used in it and it was serviced with cheap oil filters and shell rotella 5 30. And the fact the truck kept loosing coolant about a gallon every 700 miles but I never had milky oil or burned any but any 12 year old fleet truck with high idle hours and mileage is never worth anything. I was lucky to at least get my money back out of it.