I know this topic has been beat to death but I have yet to see a repair procedure for this. I've been looking around for a few days and my google is pretty strong (or so I thought). I found all the part numbers i need from the tsb but I haven't found the special mystery tool needed for this that I keep hearing about.
Mine needs to be done on my 04 f150 screw 5.4 4x4. I've never paid for automotive related labour in my life and I'd rather not start now if I don't have to. With this being such a common problem I'm surprised I haven't found more on this is all. I'll buy a service manual if I have to.

 

i dont know nothing about doing it on your own, but my cam phasers went out and it sounded like a lifter knocking.. the dealership told me it was common on my engine type and the new ones they installed would probly do the same thing if not louder.. dealership parts for them was 900 and the labor was 1250.. totalled around 2400 with tax and all.. 13 hour job supposedly, after 2 weeks i can hear the ticking again.. its honestly irritating the **** outa me i cant stand to hear it, when i do i crindge cause i cant stand to hear it sound so bad.. how long has yours been ticking?

 

This walks you through changing the cams (episode 17) I believe this would help in cam phaser swap. (26 min video). It also shows all the tools you need.


http://www.flatratetech.com/index.php?categoryid=4

Hope this helps...

 

You sir are awesome!

I bought my truck from an auction. It wasn't running long enough to unlock the phasers. I'd say it's been doing it for as long as I've had it. I'm going to run some engine flush though and change the oil to 5w20 synthetic for two oil changes before I touch the phasers. I hear they aren't gunk friendly so I want it spotless under the valve covers before the new ones go in.

Mine haven't tripped the mil yet just make a strange noise and cause a slight misfire at idle. I may also just look at locking the gears down and eliminating the phasers all together if they are going to continue to be problematic.

 

Kevin- this may not help, but make sure you're using a motorcraft oil filter. There have been threads on this as well. The motorcraft has a check value that prevents the oil from leaking out when the engine is shutdown. Might help reduce the knock a little. I was lucky to have mine change under warranty and my knock has not come back and I have almost 90K on my engine!

 

ill check befor i take off in a little bit, it should have a motocraft on it right now, since the dealership changed my oil when they did the work.. i use mobile 1 synthetic, but im about to swap to royal purple. thanks for the info on that oil filter tho. what if i was to get soem aftermarket oil filters? would they do the same?

 

My 2004 has been doing this since brand new. I just live with it, even though it is annoying at drive throughs. My truck has 54,000. miles on it and it still runs great.

 

Well I believe the phasers gave up the ghost completely today. The truck now idles like a monster truck. And when the engine is under load it shakes so violently you'd swear the truck was going to shake apart. Oddly enough it smooths out after about 5 seconds of normal load... The check engine light was flashing, I'll check that in the morning...

 

Turned out to be code 301 which is a misfire on cyl 1. I cleaned the area reseated the cop. I'll see if that does it. If not I guess it's time to do the dreaded spark plug change.

 

yeah, either that or you might have to replace the boot for the plug. we had that problem out of my moms 01 f150 befor we traded it in, changed the plug , ended up being a bad boot , cost like 90$ for a new one i think..

 

Alright I replaced the #1 plug only for diagnosis purposes (old plug was in horrible shape. I will replace the other 7 on the weekend). Misfire is still present and the COP boot is in excelent shape. My next step is to test the coil. Does anyone know what the coil resistance should be? If not I'll check a few of the ones on my truck that still work and gather an average.
I'll figure this thing out yet.

 

1.0 ohm across the upper terminals and 5400 ohms from the terminal to the sparkplug connector. So it turns out that the coil may be o.k. If that is the case I guess either the injector is faulty the engine has low compression in that cylinder or the PCM has turned off that cop for some reason. I've unplugged the pcm to reset it and see if that helps.

 

Pertaining to the Cam Phasers, I bought a 2004 FX4 with 33,500 miles three weeks ago and noticed the warm engine knock. I quickly logged on to my favorite resource site, looked at the TSB's and found I had bad Cam Phasers. The dealership, (which was a Nissan dealership) agreed to replace them only after I threatened to feed the Service Tech his lunch. The knock was eliminated. I changed the oil after the repair with Mobil1 5W20 and installed a Mobil 1 filter. Now I have a 1-2 second rattle that only occurs at cold start. Of course that same TSB says a rattle at start-up is bad VCT Phasers. I talked to a Ford service tech yesturday and he advised me to switch to the Motorcraft filter as stated in the previous posts. I am going to perform that swap today and I will report any significant changes.

 

Yes deffinitely use the ford filter. The backflow prevention valves in them are far superior to anything else.

As far as my dead cylinder is concerned it turned out to be a faulty fuel injector. Aparently they are just as common for failing as the COP. 50% of the time or so the TSB says when a coil is returned under waranty it is still good.