trinity_gt
10 Year Member
I talked to a Ford Tech today thats a friend of mine, and he said he almost guarantees that its the Cam Phasers and said that many of them do it and to run a thicker weight of oil such as 5w30. He said its a big job to replace them, and most of the time the noise will come back later down the road. Now that I do think about it, I started using Motorcraft 5w20 synthblend oil. Maybe that has something to do with it. The engine calls for 5w20, so I dunno. Anyone heard of this?
Your car doesn't have cam phasers. These are a part of the variable valve-timing feature found on the 3V 4.6L engine. The 2V has "fixed" cam timing.
He may have been referring to the timing chain tensioners though. However, you said that you heard the sound coming from the "Passenger side rear part of the engine" which probably rules out the timing chain hardware since that's all located under the front cover of the engine.
You said the sound started after you moved from MO to TX. As well, the car's only got 25K miles on it: Problems from the timing chains or tensioner hardware on such a youthful engine would be the last thing I'd suspect.
I still think it sounds like detonation. Have you tried running a can of NOS octane booster through it to see if the noise goes away? Again, did you check the torque on the spark plugs yet?
(BTW, the reason I keep mentioning NOS is because it's one of the few that I've tried that actually worked, at least for me. It got rid of a nasty throttle tip-in burst-knock resulting from very aggressive timing in my N/A tune/combo before the blower.)