jski67
New Member
- Joined
- August 23, 2022
- Messages
- 2
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Florida
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2016 Ford Explorer XLT
Hi all,
My wife's 2016 3.5 XLT developed a leaky water pump so I decided to tackle the repair myself. I bought the Cloyes kit and followed the shop manual plus the Cloyes video and thought I installed everything ok...however, upon startup the car ran rough and wanted to stall. There was also a some definite new tapping/valvetrain noise. I found a few harness plugs I missed but that didn't fix the issue, so I decided to pull the cover back off.
After watching a few more videos, I'm pretty sure I had slack in the chain when I installed the main tensioner and I'm thinking I skipped a tooth on startup.
1. It's my understanding that I can't easily rotate the engine to line up the timing marks. Do I just remove the chain and rotate the cams/crank back where they're supposed to be and reinstall the chain from there? Don't want to bend any valves.
2. I used all the parts from the Cloyes kit, but after a bit more research is seems that OEM tensioners are preferred...maybe that caused the problem? I checked the new cam tensioners once I pulled the front cover back off and they're popped up and appear to be ok. I think I'm going to at least grab an OEM tensioner for the main chain.
I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice to what I might have missed. At least it was much quicker tearing it apart the second time, lol.
My wife's 2016 3.5 XLT developed a leaky water pump so I decided to tackle the repair myself. I bought the Cloyes kit and followed the shop manual plus the Cloyes video and thought I installed everything ok...however, upon startup the car ran rough and wanted to stall. There was also a some definite new tapping/valvetrain noise. I found a few harness plugs I missed but that didn't fix the issue, so I decided to pull the cover back off.
After watching a few more videos, I'm pretty sure I had slack in the chain when I installed the main tensioner and I'm thinking I skipped a tooth on startup.
1. It's my understanding that I can't easily rotate the engine to line up the timing marks. Do I just remove the chain and rotate the cams/crank back where they're supposed to be and reinstall the chain from there? Don't want to bend any valves.
2. I used all the parts from the Cloyes kit, but after a bit more research is seems that OEM tensioners are preferred...maybe that caused the problem? I checked the new cam tensioners once I pulled the front cover back off and they're popped up and appear to be ok. I think I'm going to at least grab an OEM tensioner for the main chain.
I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice to what I might have missed. At least it was much quicker tearing it apart the second time, lol.