Big problem on my motor

[Shok]

About a week of so ago my stang started to tick but I had no time to do anything about it, yesterday I isolated the sound to the valve train on the driver side and took the cover off today, the roller on the rocker is seized and the cam lobe is a little rough. This leaves me with a some questions:

What are the chances of me getting some more time out of this motor with just a new rocker?
It seems the lifter is trapped unless the cam is removed or am I missing something?
Do I have to pull the head to swap the cam or can I ziptie the chain on the gear and unbolt it from the cam?

I'll attach a pic now and add more once they are downloaded to this device.

The background on this car:
2005 GT bought a couple of years ago with 6xxxx miles on it, it has 119xxx now and I've changed the oil every 10k with Mobil 1 synthetic. It's my daily driver and stock except for the tune as I wanted no hassles with it.

 

[Wes06]

Valve spring compressor can remove the lifter without removing the cam.

The cam may need polishing or replacing if it's too bad

 

[skwerl]

You use a wedge tool to lock the timing chain in place in order to remove the cam. No need to pull the head. The wedge tool can be had cheap, I think I even have one around here somewhere.

Are you looking to do a quick cheap fix or do you want to do it right? I'm thinking at 120K you might consider going ahead and freshen up the entire timing chain set. Tasca Ford has the whole kit with chains, tensioners and phasers. Or if you want to slap it back together by Monday then maybe just pull the lifter and clean it out real good, run some emory cloth over the cam and slap in a new rocker.

 

[Shok]

Valve spring compressor can remove the lifter without removing the cam.

The cam may need polishing or replacing if it's too bad

Are you thinking of the rocker? The lifter itself I can pull up part way but then it hits the cam lobe. I'm doing this by feel since it's one of the lifters on the exhaust manifold side of the cam so I can't see it. Hope I made sense.

Thanks!

 

[Shok]

You use a wedge tool to lock the timing chain in place in order to remove the cam. No need to pull the head. The wedge tool can be had cheap, I think I even have one around here somewhere.

Are you looking to do a quick cheap fix or do you want to do it right? I'm thinking at 120K you might consider going ahead and freshen up the entire timing chain set. Tasca Ford has the whole kit with chains, tensioners and phasers. Or if you want to slap it back together by Monday then maybe just pull the lifter and clean it out real good, run some emory cloth over the cam and slap in a new rocker.

Ok that's good news on the cam, thanks. I can Amazon prime one over hopefully.
I am really hoping to just go cheap for now, and once some other projects are taken care of them do this one right.
Are the bolts reusable if I do pull the cam?
Thanks!

 

[Shok]

Here is a pic of the cam lobe.

 

[skwerl]

Are the bolts reusable if I do pull the cam?

Yes, except for the phaser bolt. I'm guessing you should be able to unbolt the cam and get the phaser out from under the timing chain without unbolting the phaser from the cam. Just be careful not to let the timing chain slip or you'll be pulling the front cover.

Or hit NAPA and buy a phaser bolt. It will be a lot easier removing it.

 

[weather man]

Cam is done. Pick up a salvage cam.

 

[Wes06]

agreed cam is gone.

Yea i meant the arm is removable, lifter i believe cam comes out.

head stay's on, use wedge.

I have a set of stock cams around here somewhere, been a while they may need polishing

 

[Shok]

What a pain in the ass. Thanks for all the replies.
Any idea what caused this? I figured with good regular oil changes I would prevent this exact kind of issue.
The whole reason I bought this car was I was sick of timing belt motors since I drive so much that the 100k timing belt interval was pretty frequent, so now I'm replacing this stuff at 119k!

 

[eighty6gt]

The bearings/rollers in the rockers seem to be flaky junk given to fail without provocation.

 

[Shok]

And here I thought these were super reliable motors based on the fleet duty they see in other cars

 

[tjm73]

And here I thought these were super reliable motors based on the fleet duty they see in other cars

Typically they are. Your issue is not terribly common and doesn't mean the entire engine series is unreliable.

That cam is definitely junk. Almost looks like that one lobe lost lubrication. I'd check the oil passages out to make sure one isn't plugged up or you could be doing this again before too long.

 

[skwerl]

Are you running a 5w- oil as recommended or are you running a thicker oil?

 

[BruceH]

What a pain in the ass. Thanks for all the replies.
Any idea what caused this? I figured with good regular oil changes I would prevent this exact kind of issue.
The whole reason I bought this car was I was sick of timing belt motors since I drive so much that the 100k timing belt interval was pretty frequent, so now I'm replacing this stuff at 119k!

The 05/06 rockers are just a little different than the subsequent ones. There was an issue, an internet search might turn up the official Ford reason. I'd take anything else with a grain of salt.

Something else that happens is like Brian mentioned. For whatever reason people will run a different oil viscosity than recommended. This always limits the oiling to the top end with stock bearing clearances. Over time this will cause accelerated wear.

I'd guess the reason you see ultra high reliability with fleet vehicles is because there isn't anybody trying to "improve" what Ford spent so much time and money to get right.

 

[05gtowner]

Shorten your oil change intervals. I had similar problems on my 05 coupled with other lubrication issues and it was because the previous owner ran the motor too long between changes. These motors are much more oil sensitive then others. The valve train and vct are some of the last components that get oil in the lubrication path. Letting oil go too long, using oil that is the wrong viscosity (except when rebuilt and clearanced for it) are two major issues with these motors. Some try to quiet a noisy motor with thicker oil and it ends up causing other components to fail prematurely.

 

[Shok]

Typically they are. Your issue is not terribly common and doesn't mean the entire engine series is unreliable.

That cam is definitely junk. Almost looks like that one lobe lost lubrication. I'd check the oil passages out to make sure one isn't plugged up or you could be doing this again before too long.

I wondered about that, I'll google for a diagram of where the passages are.

Are you running a 5w- oil as recommended or are you running a thicker oil?

Yes, running the weight oil it says to use on the filler cap.

Shorten your oil change intervals. I had similar problems on my 05 coupled with other lubrication issues and it was because the previous owner ran the motor too long between changes. These motors are much more oil sensitive then others. The valve train and vct are some of the last components that get oil in the lubrication path. Letting oil go too long, using oil that is the wrong viscosity (except when rebuilt and clearanced for it) are two major issues with these motors. Some try to quiet a noisy motor with thicker oil and it ends up causing other components to fail prematurely.

So before the 10k mile mark with synthetic?
I just dug up my records and the car had 47k when I bought it, oil changes happened at 11k twice, at 9k three time,10k the other times. The 11k changes were due to weather or being sick IIRC.
I drive 150 miles a day for work so the intervals come up quickly.

 

[BruceH]

 

[NickD87]

I change my oil with high grade synthetic every 5k km so like 3k miles. Oils not expensive and unless your using a very good filter I'm sure that will go bad before the oil.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[Shok]

Bruce: Thanks for the oil galley info
NickD87: I always used K&N oil filters except for one time I used a wix. If I changed every 3k miles I would be changing oil all the time considering I drive 150 miles a day 5 times a week.