Hi, I am new to this forum and I was hoping someone could help me in diagnosing my problem. I have a Ford E-250 van with the 4.2 V6. It has approx. 140,000 miles on it. I have done all of the appropriate maintenance on it at the scheduled times. I drove the van on Wed. and it was running fine as usual. I started it up on Thur. afternoon. It did not start up right away and when it did it was making a loud knocking noise. I do not recall this noise when I last shut it down. I also notice it is missing a little and it has a ruff idle. I drained the oil to check for metallic parts or debris and found nothing. I also removed the valve covers and everything checked out fine. I removed the wire from the coil and turned it over with the valve covers off to see that all of the rockers/push rods were working smoothly, which they were. I am hoping it is not my worst fear, which is a broken rod. Does anyone have any ideas? If it is severe and I need to replace the motor does anyone have any suggestion as what my best and least expensive options would be? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for you time, Kirk.

 

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Welcome to the board. I don't usually come to this particular forum but those that I have met are very helpful. Does the knock fade away when you press on the fuel so as to increase the oil pressure and then come back when you get up to a cruising rpm? I recently aquired a vehicle that did that and I had a spun bearing. I was fortunate in that I can do most of the work and it cost me around $800.00 to have the machine shop clean up the engine internal as well as the block, grind the valves, hone the cylinders, polish the replacement crank, and replace the oil pump and sump. You need to get all the metal particals out of the engine or you will be back to square one all too quickly. Good luck.

Gear Up

 

Is your van a 1997 or 1998? If so,your lower intake gaskets have failed,allowing coolant to enter one or more cylinders (# 1 or # 4 or both) thus,causing hydroo-lock, and now you have a bent rod!

 

Not that my input couldn't be considered but I believe that Blue Oval has come across the symptoms before. I will have to remember that for future reference when working on the 3.8 that I have.

Gear Up

 

tunesoul,
Welcome to FTE and the 4.2 forum! Glad to have you here but sorry for what brought you here.
Sounds like you had a gasket fail alright. You may have already figured everything out by now (sorry for my slow response - I have been out of town) but anyways, here's some stuff for you to read through.....

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...d.php?t=340552

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...d.php?t=348912

Best of luck and hope you stick around here at FTE!

edit: a bent rod is not an 100% certain thing. Mine knocked and banged pretty bad and then smoothed out. No damage. But, I got the gasket replaced right after my event.