Do you remember your situation having the exact or nearly similar characteristics as those described by others and myself. This would be very helpful to know.
John

 

Exactly the same. a tick that was barely audible when idle in park or neutral. louder when was in r or d. pull up to a drive up window or any wall and sounded like a lifter or valve tick.

 

Use a Mechanics stethescope and check the area around the pass. side head. Don't rule out the balance shaft as a noise maker especially as it is in synch with the engine rpm.

 

Took a stick, had my daughter hold the brake with emergency brake engaged, put in drive, held the rpm's at around 2K and the ticking was finally nioticeable while stopped. I could hear the sound coming from the center of the exhaust manifold. I put the stick to each coil and different places on the valve cover with only a nice humm. The ticking seems to be manifold related as it seems to be ticking hard at that location.
Still open to sudjestions.
Thanks men,
John

 

I would start by repeated soaking of the studs and nuts on the manifolds with PB Blaster before attempting to loosen or tighten the nuts as they are prone to breaking. After several days of soaking I would say several prayers to all the known deitys and start removing, very gently, the nuts in preparation to changing the exhaust gaskets. From your description that seems to be the problem. It wouldn't hurt to check a couple more times first. If you feel certain that it is the gaskets too, go and get some OEMs or whatever you are comfotable with.

 

Thanks for the tip. Hope i'm right on this one.

 

Exhaust leak if not plugs. Happened to me...

 

Peter Miller has not posted to this thread what he found was causing the noise. I checked on him in other threads and he is now looking for an exhaust manifold. I am assuming that was the source of the clicking sound. My mechanic says that my dr side exhaust maniforld may be warped or needing a new gasket. Not bad enough to worry about for now.
I love this site,
john

 

What year X's had this problem with blowing the plugs???

 

Anyone know the answer to my question?????

 

I think they were fixed from 02 and up!

 

OK...so let me join the misery here. I just bought my 2000 Ex V10 from my sister-in-law. Flew to Green Bay WI yesterday to pick it up and drove it 1,100 miles straight home (got home an hour ago.) It had the same symptoms all the way home. Ticking while under load...and no other time. (By the way, I registered 14.5 mpg while averaging 63 mph over approx 16 hours.)

So I am printing the all comments of this thread off and taking them and my Ex down to my mechanic to see what he can find. I'll let you know what we discover/decide.

 

Seems like an exhaust leak could be the problem, under a load it would make more noise.

 

Moto Mel would be correct (at least for my vehicle.) Turns out I lost an exhaust manifold bolt on the driver side, furthest one back. The gasket was hanging down, so can't determine if it simply backed out or broke off. Will know more on Monday when the work gets done.

 

If it's not an exhaust leak and your plugs are all torqued correctly, you are looking at piston slap. Piston slap is pretty common on the 6.8 and often varies with engine temperature. Just google "Piston Slap 6.8" and you'll find plenty of info on it. Apparently it's not a real big deal.

Here's a link to my head replacement thread: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/9...ml#post8182072

My 6.8 is rattling one piston, but I've put around 5k miles on it and it seems dependable. It's really more annoying than anything. I'm sure it's not good for it, but dealerships tend to try to get out of warranty repair because they claim it's not a "driveability" issue. I'm planning on running it hard until it gets terribly worse or breaks the piston. I've run a 2000 mile road trip at 75 and another thousand or so pulling a 3000 lb. trailer in the mountains around 70 so I'm not really worried about it failing. But if it does, I'm just going to order in a used engine.

Back to piston slap - it sounds just like exhaust ticking and you should get a little variation based on the freshness of your oil and the temperature of your engine. I notice that if mine is warmed at idle to operating temperature, you can hardly hear it. If I jump in and drive away cold, it almost sounds tinny. It's worst at about 19-2100 RPMs and seems to go away over 2100.

Please post back when you figure it out.