This is not my truck, but my buddy has a 3.5EB SCrew that blew a timing belt at 56K miles, luckily right before his factory warranty ran out. Is this a common problem, or did he just win the catastrophic failure lottery?

 

Common enough that multiple TSBs have been issued on it. Make sure they do the REVISED one, which calls for everything to be replaced, not just the chains.

 

This is definitely becoming more and more of a problem. Background on this is that the cam phasers get oil starved and you get the cold start rattle. Once that starts, the chain gets stretched as the owner lets it go.

 

Sounds familiar. He is pretty particular about his truck, so I believe it when he says that it was fine one day and the next day it started up and sounded like an old diesel. He had it transported to the dealer but it was already too late. $7K bill that was thankfully still under warranty. If it is a problem with oil delivery to the cam phasers, that sounds like there is no way to prevent it?

I wanted a first gen ecoboost until this happened. Now that I've done some reading around, it looks like the 5.0 is the much safer bet.

 

Although I concur the 5.0 is a much safer bet overall, with the extended oil changes 5,000 up to 10,000 miles and the longer exposure to periodic oil filter bypass activation, this is another parallel to the hydraulic timing chain actuators failing at around 100k miles as compared to their design specs which say they should be good for 150K+ miles. Those who have experienced these specific failures, the majority report they are on extended oil drain frequencies- most of the Ford Master Techs I have spoken directly too regarding this, agree their gut instinct says there is a relationship between the two...... IMHO, either run a secondary bypass oil filter if they are goin to run extended service oil intervals or change the filter out every 90 days/4k miles...that will keep IMHO the hydraulic tensioners (holes) functioning and keep the chains alive

 

I've got a 5.0 with about 82K miles on it. I am using full synthetic oil, having it analyzed (for fun) and I am able to run it for more than 10K without any detriment to the oil. That doesn't mean the filter isn't getting plugged up so I'll see if I have an old one to cut open.


Glad that failure happened under warranty.

 

FYI, IMHO, I have little to no faith in most of the oil analysis labs as 1) if you are an actual lab, each state (most every) requires you be licensed and inspected by their State Fire Marshal Office at the state level (this is actually a national standard because of the complexities), and 2) the quality control is just about na at most of the facilities. An example....

http://oil-analysis.testoil.com/?p=56

By: Tim Nelson, Technical Services Manager, Insight Services

A company recently hired me to train their samplers. The company used the drop tube method to collect their oil samples so I grabbed a line of tube and began waking around taking samples with a trainee. At the first piece of equipment I cut a line of tube and took a sample and then threw the used tube away. The trainee immediately stopped me and asked why I was throwing away the tube. I was shocked to learn that he was taught to reuse the tube.

Samples taken from a drop tube or drain port have a highest potential of producing inconsistency among samples. In situations where drop-tube vacuum sampling must be used on circulating systems, the best sampling location is between the return line and the suction line. This is known as the short circuit. In addition, tubing should never be reused. To avoid minimizing sample contamination a new line of tube should be used for each sample taken.

Does your plant have a standard method for taking samples? Have all of your samplers been formally trained in taking samples? Do you have questions about the different sampling methods?

The thing to remember about oil additives is these chemicals begin to break down as soon as/starting at 1500 miles....... when do they finally give up, too many variables....and I'm not the only one with this opinion, especially with turbo's.....

Ecoboost Blues - FORD - FlatRateTech

fullsizeblazin December 4, 2014

“The black "soot" he's seeing on the tail pipes is actually oil blow by from the leaky turbos........... They think they can survive 7,500 miles between oil changes.”

Karrpilot December 2014

"Combine all of this with customers who buy into those 5-7K oil changes, and we have a ticking time bomb.”

Ecoboost Blues - FORD - FlatRateTech

ok44 January 2015

“It would seem to me that especially aged, high miles oil is going to have a real tendency to coke up when subjected to conditions like that. I've changed a number of turbochargers out (foreign cars) and every single one of them failed due to coked oil; and those were ones without the start/stop feature.”

“Ford is just like all the rest; as long as that POS makes it through the warranty period or even better, gets wiped out in a collision and hauled to the boneyard, they're content......”

Ecoboost Blues - FORD - FlatRateTech

Karrpilot January 2015

“Makes me wonder how Ford is going to get out of paying all those claims against them if the customer's follow their owners guide maintenance intervals. Yep. 100K tune ups, 100K coolant change out, 7.5K LOF's, not servicing the PTU units, transmissions, etc.”

“Me thinks I am going to be having my hands quite full in the coming years...............”

 

This is totally on point with everything that I've read over the years.