Slowly Making Our Way in ~ Timing Chain Replacement

At first glance you wouldn’t think there was a V8 motor sitting underneath all those wires, hoses and plastic. After spending an hour here and an hour there we are making some progress. My son and I got the wiring harness on each side of the engine unplugged and pushed out of the way. Antifreeze drained and A/C system evacuated. I tell you, when the boy is interested in something... he dives right in. Lol

I am going to be honest, I was dreading the day when I finally had to tear into this motor. It is a 5.4 Triton 3-Valve V8. It is found in wide spread years of Ford F-150/250/350’s,Ford Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators. This one has a little over 160k miles on it. I have never had any issues with our Lincoln Navigator until now. At startup the timing chains make all kinds of noise and it sounds like the engine is grinding up metal. It sounds horrible!!! What is actually happening is the timing chains have a tensioner on them, when those fail it puts slack in the chains. Then on startup the chains start slapping the guides and it sounds great!!! I got lucky and there is a guy on YouTube that does this whole project from start to finish. What a relief!! This is over a $3,000 repair if I were to take it to a shop. I already scored when I bought the timing chain replacement kit on Amazon. All the parts in the kit are Ford Brand parts and the regular price was $990. It was on sale for $570 I believe. When I saw that I couldn’t hit that add to cart button fast enough. Lol.

Yesterday we got the fan off and all the pulleys off and now we are ready to start pulling off the valve covers. I am just taking this one a little at a time. Working on it an hour after work each day. Now when you start messing with the timing of an engine... things can be go catastrophic real quick!! You can destroy and engine with the turn of the key. Yet this there is a way to do this project without having to worry about destroying the whole motor. So they say. Lol. Fingers crossed as we dive the rest of the way into this 5.4 Triton 3-valve V8 in the days to come. Just waiting for some special tools to come in to make this job a little “easier”