Good morning everyone,
Have a 2017 Edge Titanium, 2.0 EB with ~69k miles up here in Ohio. Have heard a bit of a rattle coming from the engine during idle and the sound appeared to be coming from the serpentine belt. First thing we did was replace the tensioner pulley on the top of the engine. Noise was still there. Replaced the water pump. Although the water pump had a little play on the pulley that also didn't eliminate the noise. So we removed the belts completely and the noise seemed to worsen so my thought was maybe a bad harmonic balancer. Not knowing there was no key on the crankshaft we removed the balancer and of course cannot get it back in time. I had the vehicle towed to a local dealership to have diagnostics run but they won't touch it without spending 7 hours tearing down the engine to reset the timing internally and at the balancer. My biggest question is can the balancer actually be retimed without a full front-engine tear down? I've seen videos where special tools are used to "stop" the engine at TDC, lock in the flywheel, and then position the balancer correctly which appeared to require significantly less than 7 hours time and could all be accomplished without taking the front of the engine apart. If anyone can confirm this, my next move will be to have the vehicle towed back to my house, purchase said tools, balancer and bolt, and realign it myself.

If it's absolutely best to do a complete tear down to do the timing that's fine as well b/c I'm willing to do that myself. Understanding they're different engines, I have done the timing chain replacement procedure on my '11 F150 with a 3.5 EB and it's running like a top. Just wanting to avoid $1k in unnecessary labor/parts by the dealership if I can accomplish the same thing for significantly less by doing it on my own. Of course, if the balancer isn't the issue I'll still have the weird rattle at idle but as long as the vehicle is driveable I'll then take it back to the dealership for their $130 diagnostics and go from there. Unless, of course, someone here has answers for all my questions in which case I'm all-in for what suggestions you may have.

Appreciate you all for reading through this and am looking forward to any feedback you may have to offer.

Thanks!
Kris

 

If you are intent on doing the job yourself, you are going to need the following tools: 303-1521 (Crankshaft position sensor alignment tool), 303-1565 (Camshaft alignment tool), 303-1689 (Crankshaft damper holding tool), and 303-507 (Timing peg, crankshaft TDC) along with an M6 bolt. Of course, you will also need access to the workshop manual procedure to do the job correctly.

As far as your rattling noise is concerned, a couple educated guesses would be the intake cam driven vacuum pump at the back of the engine, the active grill shutter and/or the turbocharger bypass valve as possible sources. Of course, diagnosis will have to commence when you've reinstalled your crank pulley correctly. Good luck.