... is ticking no more. That's because it's currently sitting in a service bay at my dealership with 4.6 liters' worth of engine parts strewn across a multitude of workbenches.
The decision was made to pull the driver's side head and have a look at the valves, once it was found that a bunch of exhaust valves were demonstrating a little too much play within their guides and seats. In fact, according to the technician (pretty much one of only two that I will trust my car with), a couple were kind of 'wedged' into their seats, as if they had seated at an irregular angle, and required a slight "push" to get them to lift off their seat. Many looked carbon'ed up somewhat, but a couple had some serious wear marks on the valve stems, probably from worn or faulty valve guides.
Some carbon buildup on the combustion chambers, probably most likely due to the oil consumption that must have been occuring as oil seeped past the bad guides. This carbon might have also served to accelerate the guide wear. Ironically, we laughed about the fact that had I not been so easy on the engine, the carbon buildup might not have been as noticeable, even though the faulty valve guides would have eventually mangled up the valve stems pretty bad in the long run.
The tops of the pistons also showed some excessive carbon buildup, again probably related to that puff of smoke that is emitted from the exhaust after some startups.
The technician mentioned that it was almost as if cylinder 7 had overheated or was running hotter than the others, while inspecting the wear. Funny, I thought I read something in here about that sort of problem with Mustangs, in another thread a few months back. I'll do the search but I thought I'd bring that up right away.
Camshaft bearings and journals looked good, according to him. No signs of ugly wear at all. So one would think it's not a lubrication issue.
So I'm waiting on some further investigations before finding out what the recommendation will be. The option is either a new motor or a new head and set of valves (which will need machining by a third party). With the new motor, who's to say whether the replacement motor will be a knocker or a ticker after a few break-in miles, and with the new head option, who's to say I can trust a low-wage machinist to care about how good the valve guide/valve stem clearances are. *sigh*
So there you have it. Those of you with ticking driver's side valvetrains (that are not related to faulty catalytic converters) might have this to look forward to, in the future. The ticking may stay the same, but it will probably get worse, as the valves "rock" within their worn guides and get their stems chewed up. Those of you with puffing engines at startup might also get presented with the same outcome. Those of you with knocking engines... well, who knows what you're up against.
My first Ford, high-performance or not. If it isn't self-destructing trannies, it's wobbly valves and slicing harnesses. And considering 99% of my weekly 500 mile usage of the car is done at very easy engine loads, it does NOT leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling about this engine. It's the ONLY engine I've ever had torn apart (except for the 1st Honda I built out of 2 scrap cars, mentioned elsewhere). Yes, I'm angry.
We'll see what comes of this. As usual, I'll keep y'all posted with any info I gleam off the great tech who's working on my old ticker.
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Thank you.
