Recently bought 2009 F250 w/5.4L, 132,500 miles. It puts out a cloud of smoke when started if it hasn't been cranked lately but does not smoke while running. It was misfiring and throwing codes 300, 302, 304 & 306. Looked under hood and saw new red coils on 2, 4 & 6. Someone had already thrown parts at the problem. Swapped coils from 1 to 2 and 5 to 6 with no effect. Same codes. Pulled injectors and they were spotless. Each fired and sprayed well on bench - looked relatively new. Pulled spark plugs. They looked fairly new. The #2 plug had no signs of combustion - perfectly clean but for a coat of oil. Center electrode was melted down to about a 2.5 mm gap. #4 & #6 plugs were dirty but coated with whitish residue. Other plugs looked normal (sort of a light tan colored accumulation but basically clean) except for 8 which had black carbon build-up. Installed new set of plugs. Now codes 300 and 302 all present all of the time and 303 & 304 show up intermittently. 303 wasn't there before. The 306 code is gone (for now anyway). I swapped coils around and the codes don't change.

It looks like the next step might be to pull the valve covers and look for rocker arm damage on #2 but I'm uncertain why #3 & #4 are randomly misfiring. Note that since doing the work above the motor has only been idling. It hasn't been driven.

I'm sure somebody has been here before and knows what I need to do next. If you could share your experience with me I'd certainly appreciate it.

 

Dove further into it today. Found head from broken valve in the intake of all places. It was in several pieces. I'm ready to drop the exhaust and lift the head. I've read several posts where people questioned whether you could pull a head with the engine in the truck. I'll know pretty soon.

 

I still don't know if the head can be pulled with the motor still in the truck. I believe that in order to do that you have to remove the timing cover because with the timing cover in place you can't remove the tensioner and with the tensioner bolted to the end of the head you can't lift the head straight off of the block. You have to move the head back toward the firewall to clear the tensioner and with the rear lower head bolt sticking up in the air (you can't remove it while in the engine compartment) that is somewhat of a challenge. I pulled the engine. It took less time to just pull the motor than I wasted trying to remove the head. If you want to try it, just note that there is one exhaust manifold bolt that is totally inaccessible, so pull the exhaust manifold with the head. Note, if I could have seen that bolt and knew where it was located I believe I could have removed it. However, the head still would not have come off.

Foremost intake valve in cylinder #2 had dropped. Both intake cam followers were broken and were laying on the head. I found the spring, cap and the top 1.5 inch of the valve stem on the head and the keys in the oil pan. The rest of the valve was in the intake air plenum (in small pieces). One lifter was destroyed. The two remaining valves and underside of head were beat to heck up by the valve that dropped. Cylinder was heavily pockmarked and indented around the circumference which locked the top ring in place. I installed a new piston and rings. Surprisingly, the rod bearing looked great after 132K. Engine was not sludged up. The roller bearings in the two broken cam followers showed no slop. Timing chain guides weren't warn badly. Motor looks to be in good shape. This was a fleet truck owned by a construction company and had obviously been well maintained. I believe this valve problem was due to engine design/low oil pressure. I left the head to be reworked and hope to start reassembly soon. I plan to install a Melling 10340 pump.

One thing that stood out to me was that the old piston slid right out and the new one slid right in. No ridge in the cylinder bore after 132K miles.

 

My opinion, if you're going to pull the heads, it would be prudent to replace the timing chains and guides while you have it torn down.

I have never heard of valve breaking on these engines as you descibe. I am very interested in hearing the cause.

 

valve debris
I'm not looking to restore this thing, just make it serviceable. I drive my other truck about 3000 miles a year and don't really expect to use this one much more than that. If I had found a bunch of warn out parts in this engine I would have replaced the whole thing. No more wear than I'm seeing I'm confident it will last as long as I need it once I replace the oil pump and tensioners with upgrades (the guides are hardly warn). The old test of when to replace a timing chain was based on bending it the hard way. These chains hardly flex the hard way. I believe it will run quite a while longer. As far as the valve breaking up is concerned, the cam followers, spring and cap and the top piece of the valve stem were on the head, the keys were in the oil pan, and all of the parts on the right side of the photo, including the long piece of valve stem, were in the intake plenum. Whoops - the photo rotated. Left is down and right is up.

 

As you can see from the dates of these posts, it has been a long drawn out project. I got it running yesterday. It sounds great. I changed the transmission fluid/filter and although everything I read said it would take six quarts of fluid, 12 quarts drained out of the pan when I pulled the plug. The fluid didn't smell bad and there was hardly any contamination in the pan. In fact, it looked cleaner than any auto trans pan I've ever pulled. I cleaned and reused the gasket and poured in the six quarts of TF that I had bought. Won't even reach the dip stick. I'm convinced I need to replace the full 12 quarts that I drained. I've gone back and searched the net without finding anything other than the six quart figure. Even though it is running, I can't drive it yet. All of the car parts stores around here close at 1:00 P.M. on Saturdays plus it is Labor Day weekend so it will be Tuesday before I can buy more transmission fluid.

In summary, I had to pull the motor in order to remove the passenger side head. I found that I had to replace the piston but the rod was OK. The piston had a lot of impact damage around the top edge which locked the ring down so that it couldn't move. There was only one small scratch on the cylinder wall and it was up high near where the top ring stops at the top of the stroke. I made the decision to leave it that way and not have it bored. I had the head reworked and all three valves replaced in the #2 cyl. along with the seats and new lash adjusters and cam followers. The cyl. head shop had a used camshaft and that saved me some dough. I did not pull the other head but did replace the valve stem seals on that side. Everything that I looked at was in great shape, no ridge in the cylinder, rod bearing looked new, cam bearings in top shape, etc.

I upgraded the oil pump to a Melling 10340 and replaced the plastic tensioners with cast iron units. I think perhaps the initial problem might have been caused by low oil pressure. Since there were no codes indicating cam position sensor problems I kept the old components. I look forward to getting it out on the road. I had a new set of Cooper tires installed and it should drive and ride great.

I haven't added everything up but estimate, tires and all, to have spent around $1800.00 on it at this point. I want to add a comment about the Haynes Repair Manual that I bought when I started this project. It contained a lot of misinformation and was missing some key information. It is supposed to cover several models but very few of the photos or diagrams applied to this model. They tell you to torque the timing cover bolts to 15 ft-lbs plus another 60 degrees. The four at the top yielded and stretched like rubber bands without ever reaching 15 ft-lbs. I had to replace them and I torqued them to only 12 ft-lbs just based on gut feeling. All of the rest were fine at 15 ft-lbs but I was afraid to turn them the additional 60 degrees. The ones I ruined were the ones with the stud on the head. All of the torque sequence diagrams for the cam shafts show six cam bearings. The 2009 5.4 has five, but there is no torque diagram for it. It seems that the bulk of the content is focused on the earlier models with perhaps less than 10% dedicated to the 2009 model. I think if you want to buy a manual you would be better off finding perhaps a Ford service manual dedicated to the model year of your vehicle.

 

Haynes/Chilton manuals are typically junk in my opinion. They are basically for extremely general suggestions. Best way to go is find actual Ford shop manuals for the truck. I had them all on a CD i got from Amazon for my 79, cost was nominal.

 

In case anyone is following this - During the test drive the right front brake was seized and ran hot. I pulled all four rotors and made plans to rework the brakes. I also noticed an oil leak at the left rear wheel, so I bought axle hub seals and the spindle nut tool. Changing the seals went well, just a lot of work. On the rear brakes, one pin was sticking on one side and one pin was frozen on the other side. That made for some fun work but all is well now. On the front, the mounting clips were rusted in place to the caliper mounting frame and I had to pry the pads out and peel the clips out with pliers. I removed all of the rust and filed the grooves clean but the new brake pads would had to be forced into the frame and would not slide. upon inspection, the backing plates were too long due to distortion which had occurred when they were sheared during fabrication. I ground away the distortion and got them down to a workable length but they sill wouldn't fit in the grooves and I found where a pin that had been pressed into the pads had distorted the ears on the ends of the pads. I ground that area flat and tried again. This time all was well except that now the ears on the mounting hardware were too long so it was back to the grinder to make some clearance for those ears. I paid about $30 for the pads (which was highway robbery, but then some other brands sell for around $60) which was the most I have ever paid for disc brake pads. This was the first time ever that I've had to remanufacture a set of new brake pads before I could use them . You would think at that price that you could expect them to fit. They were Wearever which is a brand that has been around forever and a product that you could always trust before, but with everybody going offshore now for manufacturing you can't count on anything being the same as it was before.

 

daym, this thing is giving you the run-around for sure, if someone without the mechanical ability as you do had bought it, and relied on shops for the repair, they would have surely been way upsidedown on the purchase. what did you pay for the truck, and did you know or suspect the repairs needed?

 

I have about $7500 in it so far. That includes the four new tires. I have shopped around - Rock Auto, Amazon, All of the car parts stores in our area, etc. I've bought name brand parts, Mahle, Melling, Felpro, etc.(with the exception of the wearever brakes - see above). I made a spread sheet of each part and each price and picked the best path. Cooper tire has a $70 rebate on a set of four tires. That helped. I considered factory reworked heads, used motors, etc. I made the decision not to open up the driver's side of the motor because it wasn't malfunctioning and other than the valve problem there was no appreciable wear on the passenger's side. I have watched numerous utubes and read a lot of forum comments. With the changes I've made I expect to be able to drive it for a while. If I were paying shop rates (typically $75/hr) I probably could have bought a new truck by now. I haven't even mentioned the time I've spent crawling around under it with a pressure washer wand blasting away the hardened red clay. The underside looked like it had been sprayed with red gunite. A regular garden hose wouldn't penetrate it and sometimes I had to hold the wand on a spot for several seconds before it would start breaking up. There are still some areas that I couldn't negotiate due to the wand being too long. The good side of this story is that the truck is in good shape mechanically. I believe it was well serviced as long as it was in a fleet but abused by whoever bought it. They must have taken it straight to a mud pit and had a grand old time until the valve dropped. It is one of the few trucks of this age that I saw advertised that had intact seat covers. I still need to replace the spare tire hoist and one of the horns. Next I plan to install a set of nerf bars because it is quite high off of the ground. It has a headache rack and toolbox. It is an XL model so it isn't a showpiece but it still looks pretty decent in a plain sort of way.
When I went to look at the truck I knew it was running rough but had no way of checking it out thuroughly. I was hoping it was fuel injectors. The way the truck drove it was very similar to a bad fuel injector. The tires were obviously bad and I wrote off the bad ride as being tire problems. I think now that the red clay dried all over the rotors (all of the cooling vents were plugged) and inside the wheels plus on the drive shaft probably caused the vibrations. Based upon the fact that I had been looking for about 8 or 9 months and trucks of this vintage and type were typically priced over 10K I decided to take a chance on it. Looking back, if I had known how darn hard it was going to be to work on it I probably would have passed. It wasn't the cost as much as the fact that I have so little spare time and this has been hanging over my head for about five months now. I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it isn't an oncoming train!

 

Red clay? where you at? do you think that would cause rust/corrosion issues in the future? at least you know you have been thru it, you know what you got and where you stand and you accomplished most others could not, that should be rewarding. I too tend to only repair what needs repaired, I would have done the same on the heads as you.

 

This truck was titled in Oklahoma. It was in a fleet owned by a construction company. I don't have a lot of details.

 

All is well that ends well, or so they say. The motor is running fine. It is quiet enough that you can hear the injectors clicking. I drove it softly the first week, up to 75 mph but no hard accelerations. Then I was caught in a situation where I had to either stop in a merge lane or gun it to merge. I chose the latter. I was amazed at the power for such a big truck. It seems to have settled on 13.2 mpg (mostly highway) which I wish was a little better. Now I'm starting to look into the simpler stuff - needs a horn, mud flaps, nerf bars, etc. During the repair there were several moments in which I wondered if it would ever run again. When it fired up it was a great relief. This was the most complicated engine I've ever worked on.

 

I recently bought a f150 with a miss thinking it'd be something easy too. After finding 0 psi on one cylinder I pulled the head to find a warped intake valve. Luckily mines a pushrod v6 so I didn't have to pull the motor, the piston has some small melt spots on it but I think it'll be fine so I'm going to slap a valve in and throw it back together.

Sadly this isn't the first time this has happened to me bought a van a few years ago with a miss to find out it had a burnt intake valve. The valve seat was bad on that one so threw a set of used heads on it. I think I'm going to bring a compression tester on test drives for now on.

Congrats on getting it running.

 

Thanks. The first time I did this it turned out to be dirty fuel injectors. Once cleaned that truck ran like new (102,000 miles on it). So I thought I might get lucky again but I might stop looking for these "bargains" after this one. I'm still in under the book value and potentially have a pretty good truck but at 69 this stuff isn't as much fun as it used to be. I followed up this project with some repairs on my 92 ram. I was back again in the world of $5 gaskets and having room to work under the hood. Don't know why we had to leave that.