Analyze this noise.....

[Pulsar]

Fixed it.

http://www.postimg.org/image/5xnfcaf0d/full/

 

[heymrdj]

Wow! Hope you came out alright. I do know from past experience (a civic I hated) having someone total it for you is a great way to get into something new.....but it can be painful.

 

[mvbighead]

Lolololol...

I have no Ford of my own, but was reading on those repairs and was thinking.. daaaayyum. When I saw your post I was thinking you'd have a pic of what you did. Yep, sure do...

 

[Pulsar]

Believe me when I say that this is NOT the way you want to fix it. Other guy was completely at fault - I was driving down a two way highway when he inexplicably tried to cross the road right in front of me. He was in a fullsize pickup as well, and no one was hurt. Thank goodness.

Still waiting to hear from insurance on their decision. They said they'd be finished tomorrow.

On another note, the post linked here about oil starvation is DEAD on. It's unfortunate that on a Ford forum people tried to poo-poo him. There is a definite design flaw in this engine. When even a measurable percentage of the engines develop the same problem, and the response from Ford Corporate in their diagnostics system says specifically "NEW ENGINE REQUIRED".... well. "Heavy duty" engines like these with oil and trans coolers etc. should not be self destructing at 70/80k miles.

The real problem is that the oil starvation causes a whole slew of failures because so much is hydraulically activated, from the chain tensioners to the lash adjusters to the cam phasors.

Of course, it's not nearly on the scale of the spark plug incidents - blows outs and broken plugs - that have both resulted in class action lawsuits. Just the same, it makes me embarrassed when the company I work for has a clear problem and doesn't fix it. But it's no different than GM, Toyota, or any of the others. That's why they all keep getting in trouble over stuff like that. They're trying to walk a line between what they can get away with and what they can't.

Talk about sad though. $1000 down the drain in the initial repairs, and another $300 down the drain because I had some interior components I was replacing (broken cupholder, broken overhead console light). Sending the parts back is going to be nearly as expensive as the purchase price. If they total it I'm going to have to get my audio system out too - subwoofers, amp, speakers and Pioneer radio/dvd system. Hell - this is going to make even more work for me. I swear it's never going to end.