Forum Discussion

The_Texan's avatar
The_Texan
Explorer
Oct 28, 2015

Interesting comment from an online board

"Any Ford Truck with a 5.4L Engine

The 5.4L 3-valve engines used in Ford Trucks from 2004 to 2010 develop camshaft phaser issues, especially when engines exceed the 100,000 mile mark. The first sign of an impending failure is a slight tick at idle, as the problem worsens owners complain of a noticeable loss of power. Engines running rich will clog catalytic converters and trigger check engine light illuminations; repairs are expensive. Even worse many repairs merely mask the problem for short periods of time only to have the issue return necessitating an engine overhaul or replacement. Thinking about buying a Ford pickup? Pop the hood, check the engine specifications, and run away from 5.4L equipped models."
  • Yawn, considering the millions of those motors (they are not just in the pick up trucks) in use there will be a small percentage that fail. I have owned two of them and loved them both and never did a single repair to them. Fan boy Hyperbole at it's finest.
  • Is this the same engine that has the "non-removable" sparkplugs?
  • My buddy`s dad has one. the phasers got replaced under warranty at 50k miles. it started again at 100k. and he religiously changes the oil every 3k. so it is a design flaw of the engine.

    they make kits that eliminate the phasers, and a tuner that will reflash the pcm to eliminate that part of the program.
  • Neighbor had this problem, he had an 06 or 07 with the 5.4. Good truck just had that tick that got worse. He had no other issues with it. He eventually traded it in for another truck but only cause he needed a 1 ton. So I don't know the outcome of that truck. My BIL had an 2010 250 with the 5.4 he did not have any noise and ran fine. I have heard of this before but never seen that engine have a failure from the cam phaser. Any things possible though. Thanks for the info.