Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 When one of your "new" cars is no longer new.

I fell in love with this truck on the first test drive.
Nineteen years later that hasn't changed.

It's kind of a state of mind thing. Especially if you bought the vehicle brand new, and have held onto to it for a long time and a lot of miles. You always knew that it wasn't new anymore, (how could it be after 19 years?) but I can't help but think about it as one of my "new vehicles."

I haven't bought many brand new vehicles, I could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. The first was our '84 Cougar, followed by a '90 Dodge Caravan, and a '90 Honda Civic SI. Then there was a long drought until 2007 when we bought my '07 F150 and a 2007 Mustang. That's it, five brand new cars over 42 years. The vehicle that I've held onto the longest has been my F150, which will be 20 years old next year! It's got approx.180,000 miles on it. The '07 Mustang is still in the family, my youngest daughter currently has it, and it's got a bit more mileage on it than the truck. 

Since then I've bought quite a few older hobby cars and we have bought a couple of late model, three year old "good" cars, like my '94 Cadillac Seville and '17 Ford Flex.

The truck has received routine maintenance like brakes and tires but it hasn't received any big repairs, like a transmission rebuild or engine work. (knock on wood!) that may be about to change. I've noticed a ticking/rattling sound on cold start up, and that's got me quite concerned.

What's kind of funny is that I wasn't even sure what type of engine the truck has. I know that it's a 4.2 L V6, but I didn't know if it was an OHC design or a good old fashioned pushrod OHV design. 

The '07 Mustang has an OHC V6 the displaces 4.0 L. I thought that the truck's engine was a slightly enlarged version of that engine.

After a little internet research I learned that this engine was a traditional OHV design. 

My initial thought about the sound was that it was the hydraulic cam chain tensioner. It was probably bleeding down after the engine was stopped and was sitting for a time. The noise would fade as the oil pressure built up in the tensioner and the engine warmed up. This hypothesis made sense to me; except for the fact that the engine doesn't have that type of long cam chain! It has one of those old fashioned silent drive cam drives like all of my old V8 cars had. Those motors didn't have any tensioner on the cam chain.

Google is a wonderful thing, and it lead me to quite a bit of information about this noise.

I found that this noise is fairly common as these engines run up higher mileages.

It sounds a lot like the classic "lifter tick."

The wear occurs at the curved portion of the fulcrum block
where it meets the curved surface of the rocker arm.

The videos that I watched attributed this sound to wear in the rocker arm and fulcrum block. This Ford engine is similar to the old small block Chevy.  Each valve has it's own individual mounting bolt that holds the fulcrum block and the rocker arm. The Chevy engine uses a stud in the head and an oval fulcrum. This Ford engine has an individual mount for each stamped metal rocker arm. There is a fulcrum block that sits inside the rocker arm. According to the videos, wear between the two components results in a ticking sound that gets louder as the wear increases. The rocker assembly is noticiably loose, and can be wobbled by hand once the valve cover has been removed. One video recommends replacing the rocker, fulcrum, and pushrod. All three components as a set. One poster only changed out the loose valve and got satisfactory results.

Other posters recommend replacing all the components on every valve, twelve in all. That's what I would do, it would be the best use of my time and effort.

I was hoping that I could get over 200,000 miles on this engine without having to do any repairs, but 180,000 miles is a fair amount of miles.

Today I thought that I would do some diagnosis on the problem. 

I knew that the noise was noticeable upon a cold start, and that it would quiet down as the motor warmed up. Usually subsequent starts were quiet. It wasn't a really loud noise, but I could hear it if I had the driver's window open.

This time I started the engine cold and timed how long it took for the noise to decrease. It took a little less than three minutes. My plan was to bring the engine up to normal operating temperature and add the "miracle in a bottle" Rislone Oil treatment. This stuff is supposed to quiet ticking lifters.

"Miracle" in a bottle?

There are all kinds of oil treatments available at the local O'Reilly's auto store, Some thicken the oil viscosity to seal the worn surfaces and reduce blowby and oil burning. This is like the classic STP additive that is as thick as honey. The other type of treatment is supposed to clean oil passages and lifters internally, allowing it to function properly. Hopefully that would eliminate the noise. These are more like a solvent. I imagine that this might lower the viscosity of the oil, though the info on the back of the bottle claims that it won't.  

The engine was warm when I stopped to add the treatment. It was quiet as it idled, just before I shut it off. I added the stuff and when I restarted the engine it was quiet on start up. I was on my way to Costco and had another couple of errands to run. I ended up putting forty five mostly freeway miles on the truck this afternoon.

When I parked the truck at home, I couldn't hear any noise. I left the engine running and popped the hood. The engine sat there idling away, quiet as when it was new. 

Hmmmmm, I was certain that I'd be changing out those valve train parts, but it looks like I might be able to push that back for a bit. I think that I might go ahead and order the parts that I need so that I will have them on hand when the time comes. 

It's not that I don't have a lot of other things to do with my truck. I had ordered a replacement drivers seat bottom cushion cover that's been sitting in the garage for quite a while. Recently I ordered a replacement cover for the center arm rest which had split a seam. That arrived last week. I think that I might tackle this job first.

I'm going to let that oil treatment circulate through the system for another fifty miles or so, before I have the oil changed. If the detergent/solvent like additive dissolves varnish, gum, and whatever- it's got to be dispersed into the oil. No need to let that gunk recirculate in the oil supply any more than necessary.

It's been a few days and the engine is remaining quiet so I definitely will get started on some other projects.