Need some help

[The D]

I need some ideas thrown out that would cause severe hesitation with a change in engine tone while driving.

I noticed it in my way home from work. I have an 18 mile drive and it never overheated, no warning lights at all. I was able to limp it to my wife’s work to trade vehicles so I could get the kids from school. She can limp it home from there, she works close to home

I changed the engine and ptu oil this weekend and was able to do a quick check before I left. No leaks under the vehicle; oils or coolant. Coolant looks ok, level in reservoir is ok. Engine oil has ~50 miles on it so it obviously looks good. No obvious coolant mixing in oil-either from looking at the dipstick or in the coolant reservoir

As of this posting my wife isn’t home with it yet so all I have is the above. This is what is running through my head so far

Fuel pump- Maybe

Camshaft adjusters- Do these ever fail but not trigger a check engine light?

Engine bearing damage- I’m really afraid of this. There is a noise coming from the engine. But the oil looks fine and the oil that came out of the engine looked ok too

Transmission problem- car has 158k on it and it wasn’t until last year that I changed the fluid. This wouldn’t surprise me at all

Catalytic converters plugged- Pretty sure this would cause a misfire and trigger the check engine light. This is sort of what it feels like though

Please, someone tell me there are cheap, easy, magical fixes…

 

[The D]

My wife got the car home and said the check engine light came on. I’ve never been so glad to have a check engine light come on. Now I just need to charge up the battery on my scan tool…

 

[peterk9]

Have you checked the oil on the dipstick? If it's milky colour then it could be the water pump. And if it is, don't drive it!
Hopefully, it is something else.

Water pump failure leads to dead engine

I hate being the guy that joins only to have his first post be about needing help, but I’ve been lurking here for the better part of a year and now have a depressing reason to reach out for assistance. This is long, so the summary is 1k miles over warranty, water pump failed without any check...

www.explorerforum.com

Peter

 

[The D]

So, after many hours and dollars of headache I have the timing cover off again and have the cams/plates in their proper positions but the crank sprocket is waaay off. Nothing looks damaged and I don’t see any pieces that I accidentally left off/on when I did the water pump/chains in the fall(I was actually pretty worried that I would find something really dumb that I did). Any advice going forward? New tensioners? Could the phasers fail internally to cause something like this? I can’t figure out why this happened and I don’t want it to happen again. Especially since we’re planning a bunch of camping trips way out in the Colorado hills this summer

Cams properly aligned with plates installed

Crank sprocket way…waaay off

 

[TXScott]

Made this clip from a longer video for you, hope it helps.

✂️ chain colored links reference

36 seconds · Clipped by k0rtez · Original video "Ford Explorer NA 3.5 timing chains, water pump replacement" by Technician Red

youtube.com

 

[The D]

Going through this nonsense again has made me very paranoid so I have a silly question.

I have the chains & guides back on with new main tensioner and phasers. All in their proper orientations with the plates installed. The engine rotates fine and is still aligned properly after several rotations of the crankshaft. Something weird is going on with the tensioner though and because I’m paranoid now, I’m not sure what to think. The engine gets to a point in the rotation where there’s some resistance, I’m betting it’s a spot where several cam lobes are pushing on the valves at the same time, and the tensioner will get pushed in a little then extend normally. Can someone please tell me that this is fine, that I should stop being paranoid, & to just put this [expletive] thing back together already?