5.4 Triton F150. Looks like a new motor is in store

[jonp]

I heard the truck making sounds in the front right side and it sounded just like a cam phaser which I posted on in a different thread. I took off the valve cover on that side and the phaser looked non-factory. Upon further looking I noticed the top chain guide was gone. Not present so I figured with 150k it needed a timing chain job anyways so ordered the parts and figured to do it myself.

My first inkling that I was not the only guy that had gone into that engine was the non-factory cam phaser. The second was the valve cover bolts. The bolts on the drivers side were not torqued correctly. It didn't leak oil but some were loose and some were tight. When I got that off I started taking the front pulleys off of the motor and noticed some of the bolts were bunged up. Then I tried the harmonic balancer/camshaft bolt. Wouldn't budge. I laid into it and managed to get it off but my worst fears were realized. Someone had did a timing chain job already on it most likely because one of the cam phasers went out, replaced the cam phasers but I surmise didn't tighten the chain guides to spec and one fell off or one broke off.

The crankshaft bolt was cross threaded and the cam striped inside. I think they started to put it back together, cross threaded the bolt, finished the job and immediately traded it which lead to me buying it last year.

So, I can either pull the engine and replace the crankshaft or put in a motor. Way to go Ford with the stupid 5.4 Triton, cam phasers and plastic chain guides.

So, should I spend $6,000 or so for a Jasper Engine, with 150k on the motor just replace the crankshaft or set the piece of junk on fire?

[mozeppa]

jasper engine.....they do a great job.

6k is cheaper than a new truck ...and if you treat it nice it'll go a lot farther than 150k miles.

[jmort]

Will one of the 2009/2010 engines plug and play? I believe For got the last two years of production on the 5.4 Triton right and then prompltly quit making them. I would consider a new engine if the truck is otherwise in good condition.

[dubber123]

Wind the crank bolt back in with a bunch of Red Loctite. Let it sit a few days and forget it. If it is healthy other than guides, just replace the worn parts and drive on. My brother has an old Volvo that stripped the keyway on the crank, and chewed the crank snout and ID of the balancer out. He got the car cheap. It has a beer can shim and Loctite holding the balancer on. It has been that way for over 5 years and close to 100,000 miles.

[Plate plinker]

Depends on if you think the chassis and other stuff will survive long enough to get $6000 out of a new engine. Also I like the repair it and drive it until it blows mentality. Beer cans and RED Loctite! Thats awesome. No use wasting ammo money on stupid engines.

[shoot-n-lead]

Wind the crank bolt back in with a bunch of Red Loctite. Let it sit a few days and forget it. If it is healthy other than guides, just replace the worn parts and drive on. My brother has an old Volvo that stripped the keyway on the crank, and chewed the crank snout and ID of the balancer out. He got the car cheap. It has a beer can shim and Loctite holding the balancer on. It has been that way for over 5 years and close to 100,000 miles.

X 2

I have seen similar things work on many occasions...once it is on, it is not going anywhere and you are not really out a lot, if for some reason, it doesn't work.

When I was growing up, we bought a low mileage pickup that was skipping from a blown head gasket. It was blown between cylinders and had been driven a too long with the bad gasket. It had cut the block between the cylinders. Well, Daddy said we had nothing to lose...so we put epoxy in the low spot, put on a new head gasket, reassembled and let it set a week before starting. The truck started fine, never blew the gasket and we drove it until the whole thing was worn out. Just showed me, sometimes unorthodox repairs, do work.

[dkf]

At this point it is worth a shot to try and make what you have work. Chains and guides are not that awful expensive. You can either run a tap through the crank as straight as you can and then put the bolt back in with high strength Loctite for bolts over 1/2" or just leave the threads as is and try the Loctite. The balancer should bite into the crank snout pretty good when the bolt is torqued down.

Possibly sounds to me like someone tried to replace the cam phaser and didn't want to buy the right tool which lead to them having to pull the front cover. Usually chains, guides and tensioners last a long time.(unless there is a TSB specifying a bad parts run)

[jonp]

I have the chains, guides etc. The bolt just slips in without threading. Maybe JB Weld to fill the hole and thread the bolt into it then let it sit? If it doesn't work then I will still need a new engine.

Think JB Weld will work? Anyone ever try a HeliCoil kit?

[dubber123]

HeliCoils work, not usually cheap, but compared to a whole engine.. Sometimes something as simple as a length of copper wire run into the hole before the bolt goes in gives it something to bite on. If it's that loose, extra Loctite or epoxy :)

[runfiverun]

I'd tap it out to a new bolt then buy a new 3.00 bolt.
clean everything up and put it all back together, you already spent the money on the parts.
put the 6-G away and add to it so you can replace the truck when it's completely done.

[dkf]

I have the chains, guides etc. The bolt just slips in without threading. Maybe JB Weld to fill the hole and thread the bolt into it then let it sit? If it doesn't work then I will still need a new engine.

Think JB Weld will work? Anyone ever try a HeliCoil kit?

Depends on how hard the crank is. To install a helicoil it needs drilled out to a larger size and tapped for the helicoil. You'd have to buy the helicoil kit that comes with the special tap. If the crank is 30Rc or less in hardness you should be fine installing the helicoil or just tapping it out for a larger bolt. Going to a larger bolt would be cheaper if there is enough room in the balancer to open up for the larger bolt. If you need help figuring out what the next sized bolt would be along with the thread engagement shoot me a PM.

With completely stripped out threads I would not expect an epoxy to hold well enough.

[Houndog]

A heli coil will fix things properly and even if you have to pay some mechanic or machinist to do the job it will be a heck of alot less than 6,000 bucks! Another thing that will work in some cases is to tap the hole with an American Standard thread IF the bolt happens to be metric. A bunch of national fine thread bolts are juat enough bigger than their metric counterparts to allow a rethread and get good threads. This IS NOT as good of an option as heli coiling the hole, but it will work in some cases. since you already have it torn down and the parts bought, I'd try to fix it and finish wearing out the engine! Save them $$$$ as long as you can! Hard times are a comin.

[starmac]

It has been a while since I have bought a helicoil kit, but they were like 30 bucks then, were not talking mega bucks, and if you can drill it, they are a permanent fix.
I have owned 2 5.4 engines and put 230,000 on the first one with zero problems, the one I have now has just over 100,000 so far with zero problems, maybe I was licky.

I have heard there is a cam phazer delete kit that eliminates the problem, but haven't any first hand knowledge, because mine were trouble free.

[MaryB]

Friend of mine cracked the crankcase on his lawnmower. He stripped it down, cleaned and degreased it, filled the crack with jb weld and clamped it then used JB weld to put a patch over the top of the crack. That was 15 years ago and that mower is still going...

[akajun]

Helicoils use the smallest hole, but they use a proprietary tap which, as was stated, is expensive. Kenniserts and easy lock inserts are cheaper, as they use standard taps and bushings, but require a bigger hole.
I would try the helicoil, for about $100 you could have this done.

[DougGuy]

I like R5s idea but will go one step sideways. Those bolts are usually pretty hard, you could easily find another crank bolt from a different engine that was just a tad bit bigger, figure out what THAT thread is and buy the tap for it. This is no place for JB Weld since you won't be able to get enough of it in there to hold threads, it would be very very thin once tapped. If the bolt slides in as easily as you say, loctite won't hold it either since loctite needs a halfway tight fitting thread to work right.

There IS some stuff called Fluid Weld that is made of the same stuff they put tiles on the space shuttle with, it costs $30 per 2oz. but it does things that only a WELDER could do better and it's good to 3,000°F. If you got a sleeve made with the threads inside it, you can drill out your crank, knock the sleeve in there with fluid weld on it and buddy you would NEVER get that bad boy apart!

I used fluid weld on a piece of aluminum that I inserted a carbon steel bearing nut into, not even a press fit, and had to totally destroy both pieces to get it back out. This stuff is serious business. It is used repairing cracked cylinder heads, to hold a valve guide tight in a cylinder head, to join dissimilar metals, it has a lot of uses for where you want something chemically welded together by etching the surfaces while they are under pressure.

http://www.silver-seal.com/product/30333/Seal-Lock-Fluid-Weld-2-oz-Bottle.html

[jonp]

Thanks everyone for the ideas. I think my first order of business will be to get a M12x1.5 tap and see if I can clean up the threads enough to get the bolt to grab. If not then a helicoil kit of that size is only $40 and a 5 piece "just as good as helicoil" with different sizes is $50. If the tap doesn't work nor the helicoil I will tap it out to an M14 and try that.

[lightman]

Thats a thought, go bigger. The 3M steel putty that I use says it can be drilled and threaded. Not sure about JR weld.

[funnyjim014]

Stop with the epoxy ideas...find some one to time-sert the bolt bore to the right size. I work for a gm dealer and we use them from screws to head bolts. A timesert is the same idea of a heleacoil but solid and is locktight and staked in place. The only thing that may work against you is if it's too long of a threaded hole. Either way a crank us still cheaper than a engine. Just some thoughts on your bad day. We all get them

[Lloyd Smale]

yup the epoxy fine if you plan on only driving it to the dealership to dump it off on someone else. Id try the helicoil and if it works drive it till it drops. IF that doesn't do the trick and the rest of the truck is in good shape I wouldn't hesitate to put a motor in it. But keep in mind that at a 150k theres a lot of wear in the drivetrain. Bearings gears transmission, transfer case all could run another 100k or fail anytime. As you probably already know or will find out is keeping an old truck on the road requires keeping your wrenches handy. Not many people anymore are willing to do the work to keep one on the road. I know I'm not. At 60 with my wonderful back I can no longer crawl under trucks and turn wrenches. So when they get a 100k anymore I'm looking for something new.

[runfiverun]

if the helicoil don't work I'd bet a 220 miller and some super 1,000 rod would fix it right up.

[akajun]

if the helicoil don't work I'd bet a 220 miller and some super 1,000 rod would fix it right up.

you would warp the crank, at least make it out of round, requiring a regirind.

[jonp]

BACK IN BUSINESS! I bought a M12x1.5 tap today, sprayed it down with Ballistol and then sprayed into the crank a little to wet it up and several turns it started to go in easier so I backed it out then did it again. I got my new crank bolt out and it turned in feeling tight enough so I'm going to douse it liberaly with Red Loctite and put it in and see if it holds when I put the harmonic balancer back on. I think it will hold.

How do I get the Ballistol out of the crankshaft end so the Loctite will set up good?

[William Yanda]

I had a stripped caliper bolt that was repaired with red loctite and some steel wool when loctite alone wouldn't hold. A $100 solution sounds better than a 6k solution to me. It's obvious that I am from the cheaper is good enough school.

[Alvarez Kelly]

How do I get the Ballistol out of the crankshaft end so the Loctite will set up good?

Aerosol brake cleaner

[Mica_Hiebert]

if a balancer bolt is all thats leaning you twards a 6000 dollar engine I would weld the darn thing on before spending that.

[DougGuy]

I drove a '69 Dart 340 from Corpus Christi, TX to the Mississippi gulf coast, started making a knocking noise around Victoria, so I determined that since the crank bolt was indeed tight, that somehow there was some wear in the keyway so, being I was on a mission said "f" it and put it back in gear and drove off. 700 hard miles, then parked it for 3 days.

Finally got around to pulling the balancer to see what was left of the crank, so I lit a bic so I could see the keyway, and I will never forget the sound that motor made when it literally sucked the flame right off the bic lighter, and exploded. Smoke so thick I could not see for a few minutes, I reached up and the front oil pan seal was dangling so I yanked it the rest of the way out and crawled out from under it. The valve covers were about 20 feet to each side of the car, bulged and flattened like a watermelon rind been in the sun a few days, little pieces of sheet metal still bolted to the heads under the bolts, LUCKILY the oil pan did not blow off in my face...

Cracked the block completely through the middle web from the main bearing all the way up, so the block was toast.

Be careful about welding around an engine. I learned my lesson the hard way and was LUCKY it blew out the top and not out the bottom...

[PaulG67]

This could be an option.

http://remanns.com/?utm_source=BDTM&utm_medium=PPC&utm_content=AC3&utm_campaign=RMG&matchtype=b&network=o&kw=%252Brebuilt%2520%252Bengine&ad=%7bcreative%7d&sitetarget=%7bplacement%7d&adposition=%7badposition%7d&mobile=

[starmac]

Doug guy, sounds like your oilpan had filled with gas, real gas, not what we have these days. I would say you wereextremely lucky most of the blast went up. The problem with welding the harmonic balancer on would be, there is a good chance it would ruin the seal, and how would you change it then. lol

[Detroitdanm]

If you can pull torque with the cleaned up threads & locktite you should be good to go. If not than helicoils or keenserts will do the job. We've put many an engine back together with them over my 20 plus years of working with Detroit Diesel and other heavy duty engines.

[bob208]

first see if you can stridhten the threads out with a tap. then see if you can go a little deeper with the threads. if that works put a stud in the crank and use a nut to hold the balencer on.

in racing engines we always used studs and nut when there were going to be a lot of tear downs.