Question about intake o-rings and cam tensioners....

[ton_e_montana]

I know there are a lot of comments on here about this subject. All of which I read to gain valuable info before I went to the Ford dealership. I wanted to start another thread cause a lot of them are old and I wanted to get everyones opinion here which I value highly. My girlfriends 98 SOHC 4.0 has a cold idle problem and rattling in the top of the motor. The truck is just before hitting 100k miles. I know I can't get in the intake gaskets done under recall because it expired at 72k miles. A lot of people got this done for anywhere between $200-500 depending on where they went. I thought if I bit the bullet and had this done they could inspect the cam tensioners while in there and replace if necessary. Does this sound like the correct procedure or is the cam tensioner fix a totally different job? Also, before going into any of this a diagnostic is probably the right starting point. They said it would be $81 for that. Is this the way to go? By the way, I have cleaned the IAC with no luck and replaced TPS. I figure a diagnostic will tell me if its O2 sensors or IAC or exactly which way to go. The dealer said in order for them to warranty the cam tensioner fix, I would have to approve the charges in case that isn't the problem then wave the charges if they are bad. If they are already in there for the intake gaskets, can't they insepct them then? Any help on this would be great.

 

[ton_e_montana]

anyone?

 

[Bill MacLeod]

The 00M12 program replaces the upper intake O-rings (gaskets) and another part that is visible in the lower manifold for the cam tensioner. I had this done earlier this year and so far the funky idle is gone but there is still a rattle on start-up.

Actual cam tensioner replacement I think involves much more work and probably is costly. So I'll move this up top for you for someone else to explain.

 

[ton_e_montana]

Thank you for the response. I am learning more about this. Its seems that the cam tensioner can be the source of the bad idle as well as the o-rings. The truck is at the Ford dealer now and they diagnosed it as bad cam tensioner and said it will be $345.00 to fix. I reminded him about the Owner Notification Program for this was good for 7 years and 100k miles and he confirmed it. The truck sits there as a 1998 with 99,968. Wow, I lucked out.