Some 5.4 3v suffering for us all to see

[The_Eric]

In your opinion does the type of oil came into play here? What I mean is that maybe a cheap oil was used in this vehicle, and maybe things would be different if a good oil like Mobil 1 or Pennzoil Ultra Platinum was used?

That's a question open to an awful lot of opinion. In MY opinion, I doubt any particular type or brand matters in this application. Want to run cheap Dino oil? Run short ocis.. The 3v Ford isn't really tolerant of long ocis, so short is the name of the game... Maybe the 1st owner ran 5k on conventional?? You could run a premium syn longer, but (again imo) probably not as long as could be done in a different engine.

On the other hand... This thing made it at least 190k on whatever 1st owner put in... How bad of a job could he have done?

Im not arbitrarily a short or long oci guy.. The truck as mentioned is on 3 to 5k intervals on Napa sun, my wife's aviator with the 4v 4.6 is 10k on Mobil 1 EP and my beater Honda is on... Whatever/Whenever.

 

[Kjmack]

That could be, though we have 220k on my wife's example and the engine is still as quiet as a church mouse and it's never been opened up for any reason. I've never even broken a spark plug in the thing. Most of it's life it had 5w20, though I've been using 5w30 the last several years.

Buy a lottery ticket tonight !

 

[ripcord]

Buy a lottery ticket tonight !

If I did that, it would blow up tomorrow.

 

[blupupher]

I would bet my brother in law's '04 F150 3v looks similar. Tons of metal in the filter every change.
180,000 miles on it. When I started changing the oil in it @ 150,000, it had a horrible knock and rattle all the time (as well as several issues that I took care of (changed all 8 plugs with no broken plugs, replace clogged cats, replace a 8 COP)).
More frequent changes and synthetic oil (from 0w-20 to 10w-40) have quieted it down quite a bit, but still lots of metal in the filter.

I keep telling him he needs to sell it now while the market is "hot" and before it explodes, but he keeps saying he likes it.

 

[ripcord]

Sounds like his cam phasers are bad and wearing out. Good chance one or more of the timing chain tensioners seals are blown, too.

 

[The_Eric]

Well I got curious again, so I pulled another main and some rod caps.. Ugh.. The other main didn't look bad considering the mileage amount of trash ran through it.. The rods were hit or miss, with #1 rod bearing being spun too!

I'm surprised this thing lasted like it did and didn't make more noise!

 

[tcp71]

The modular engines from Ford (4.6 2 or 3V, 5.4 2 or 3V and 6.8 V10) are generally considered to have a strong bottom end. Plugs and Timing are known issues, but cranks, rods and piston issues are relatively rare. You obviously are showing a very neglected exception.

 

[The_Eric]

The modular engines from Ford (4.6 2 or 3V, 5.4 2 or 3V and 6.8 V10) are generally considered to have a strong bottom end. Plugs and Timing are known issues, but cranks, rods and piston issues are relatively rare. You obviously are showing a very neglected exception.

I'm pretty sure that rod bearing was due to trash from the main.

 

[The_Eric]

To clarify the first post - I only replaced the rod bearings. Obviously I should have pulled the mains too, but didn't know that #1 was wiped and these are cross bolted mains, so really didn't want to hassle with them.. Guess it serves me right huh?