I have a 1988 F-150 six cylinder 4.9L with 350,000 mi. The truck just up-and-died one night while driving on the highway. The breakdown was pretty sudden, it was as if the key was turned off while driving.

After towing it home and checking it out, we learned that there was no spark coming from the coil. We replaced the ignition control module and coil and still had a no spark condition.

I posted a message on the forum describing the problem and got some helpful advice. The no spark problem appeared to be related to the pick-up coil (hall effect sensor, PIP sensor).

While investigating the pick-up coil problem, we discovered that the rotor was not turning. Digging in a little deeper we found that the nylon camshaft timing gear had lost a dozen teeth and completely lost contact with the crankshaft gear (no timing chain on the ’88 4.9L).

So the no spark condition was due to lack of rotation of the rotor. An easy thing to check early on before spending the time and $ replacing the electronics.

The camshaft gear was quite fatigued and difficult to pull. It took a lot of drilling, and chiseling to loosen its grip on the camshaft.

I replaced the crankshaf and camshaft gears and created a new problem. I lightly tapped the gears on with a hammer, rather than pressing them on bolt and thick washer (or the recommended Ford camshaft gear replacing adapter). Before tapping the camshaft gear into its final position, I noticed I knocked the camshaft back about 3/16” into the engine block.

My 2 questions are 1) what kind of damage might have I had done by pushing the camshaft back into the block ?. It doesn’t appear that any lifters came off the camshaft lobes, but I am worried about what happened to the gear at the distributor, and what the opposite end (rear end) of the camshaft make contact with by traveling 3/16”.

2) I attempted to put a bolt into the bolt hole at the front end of the camshaft, and tried tapping the camshaft forward to recover the 3/16”. Unfortunately I used the wrong bolt and messed up the threads in the camshaft bolt hole. What is the proper bolt size and thread pitch are for the camshaft bolthole ?

Thanks