I'd replace given their price. They are pretty specific in their calibration flow rate at idle. (Just shaking and getting a rattle only tells you that its not stuck - doesn't tell you if it squeezes the flow down at idle.)

 

A new thought: if the heads look like this, would the crank journals and mains also look like this? Or are they harder than the cam and girdles?

 

Cylinder heads international has them for $300 a piece. I have used there products before with out issues.

 

Thanks, I'll check them out for sure!

 

Cylinder Heads International - Quailty Rebuilt Cylinder Heads

 

There is a chance that it may look like this, but the oil channels feed the mains and journals first before it goes to the heads as far as I know. Does the cams on both heads have the same marks? It might be a clogged oil channel going to the heads, in which case the lower end should still be fine, or in worst case scenario the engine has been run dry of oil and the lower end is just as bad.

 

yes, they were both very similar. So this might be an oil channel clogged, or just not enough oil in the system?

 

Could be both, and it needs further inspection if you want to find out for sure. At this point, if you don't have a factory workshop manual, I would strongly advice you to get one. It describes how to do it. Unfortunately, you may be looking at pulling the block from the car in order to inspect the lower end.

There's 3 or 4 things that comes to mind on the cause of this:

Engine run on low or no oil
Bad oil pump
Clogged oil filter
Clogged oil channels.

It's not unlikely that you have some clogging in filter and/or channels if your engine has previously been thought to have oil sludge in it, and then it depends on where that clog is, and if it has starved the mains and journals of oil. If that has happened, you're looking at a complete engine rebuild, or buying a remanufactured engine so you should inspect this before you start putting money into parts. If you end up with an engine rebuild, it might not be too far from buying an engine, they're about 2-3000 bucks or so, and you'll get a core-refund for your old engine.

 

Thanks, Skauber. I'm going to drop the pan and see if the mains or journals are affected. If they are, I'm going to get a reman. I'll take pictures of what I find.

 

"New reman"?

 

Well, "new-ish"

 

Here are more pics of the heads, cams, etc.:












And in the cam bearing races, you can see tracks leading away from the oiler holes.


The question was: Does the lower end look like the top end? So I decided to drop the oil pan. Raise your hand if you have done that on a newer 4WD Expedition. Okay, you know what I'm talking about. I had to take a frame crossmember and the front axle loose to slide the pan out from under the oil pickup. Good thing I had already removed the heads and the fenderwells, because I couldn't have reached some of the axle support bolts otherwise.

Got the pan off, took off the caps. The journals and main bearings look good. The bearings are harder, because they are steel, as is the crank. I was glad to see that they were not chewed up like the heads were. So whatever went through my engine was harder than aluminum, but softer than steel, or maybe the top end was starved.

So, I have decided that I'm in for new heads. I weighed the cost of having a local shop re-work the heads, cleaning, line-boring, valve job, resurfacing the head gasket surfaces, etc., and it worked out to just about what remanufactured heads off ebay cost. So here are the ones I'm getting:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ford-F-150-Expedition-4-6l-Cylinder-Heads-PAIR-00-04-Cast-RF-1L2E-01-04-COMPLTE-/201314189594?hash=item2edf42c11a&vxp=mtr
I hope they get here soon! I'm ready to be done with this job. Ready to pull the boat to the lake, but first I gotta get this done.

 

That's a lot of work, but at least you're doing the right things and not taking shortcuts.

 

Did you check the oil channels? Might be a good idea to try to poke something through them to make sure they're not clogged up by anything, causing the heads to not get proper oil supply.

 

Good idea, perhaps compressed air would work too.