A family members '03 King Ranch 5.4 started experiencing a loud knocking/wacking noise coming from the passenger side valve cover. The engine was running okay but was making a terrible sound. I pulled the valve cover hoping to maybe find a slack chain with a failed tensioner. Instead, I found the photos below... The cam journals appear to have been running dry as there is metal flake material all over the place. Maybe the oil feed to the head got plugged or something. I just drove the truck to my place last night and the underside of the valve cover consists of dried up oil.

The head and cam looks toast. I guess I'll be heading to the junk yard to pull a good used one. What do yall think?

 

Huh, what happened, wrong oil I expect. Sure looks dirty as hell.

 

I think the oil changes are pretty well kept up with. This truck has around 190k miles. Also, a little bit of the dirt looking stuff in the head came down from up top when removing the valve cover.

 

Royal Purple?

 

Low oil wear. If ports are not plugged it may be burning oil.

 

If by burning oil you mean running low on quanity then it's not that. Its a fairly externally dry engine and it doesn't use any oil. How many oil supply passages to the head are there? It looks like the front and rear journals are getting oil but the middle ones look like they've been eating themselves up.

 

That is lack of oil. See #3 &#4 cam bearing caps how hot they got. You can see the dark discoloration and the caps were so hot the oil was burned off the cap. I would look for a blockage, remove the cam caps and you will see the aluminum melted. You are a heartbeat away from snapping the timing chain from the resistance those failed bearing surfaces are generating. Look for nylon debris from the chain guide plugging your oil pump pickup screen and debris blocking the cyl head oil restricter passage. The head is toast at this point. The deposit discoloration can be deceiving. Different gas additives from different parts of the country can leave these stains as can some oils. You were generating some high temps from friction on those bearings and that can cause staining as well. Poor lubrication from lack of oil changes will usually show alot of wear on the bearing surfaces and lobes but when you lose oil pressure and/or supply you start melting that aluminum. Even old oil will usually prevent the melting of metal.

 

I don't suppose it has a Fram oil filter on it? If the cheap end caps came apart, the debris has blocked the oil journals. I would suggest gently tearing the oil filter apart to see if it's still intact. I would not attempt any rebuild of the engine at all until you find the exact issue. This may be just the beginning of more issues with this engine. Frankly, I wouldn't consider even an overhaul on this complete engine. I'd start with a running junkyard engine or a rebuilt long block.

 

it does appear to be scrap.

 

Driver Side is located in front of head and the passenger side is located in the rear of the head.

 

By checking the oil pump screen do you mean the pickup in the pan? If that's the case I may just end up pulling the motor. The inside of the valve cover was dried up even after driving the truck in the night before. There has to be a blockage somewhere. The plan is the replace the head with a junk yard part. Maybe have it checked and tanked at a machine shop. I may dongle chains and guides too but need to look into if aftermarket chain kits are okay or if eom is the only way to go here.

 

Well as Labnerd and jethat mentioned above I would also beware of the engine integrity as well. If the blockage is in the cyl head oil resticter then its possible the rest of the engine can be salvage. However you can see debris that is being generated by the burnt cam bearing surfaces and it can end up in the oil pan then travel through the oil pump etc. We are also making an assumtion that its just the cyl head and other components have not been compromised. You don't want to pour good money into an engine that will self distruct from making assumptions on its overall condition. Yes the pickup screen is in the oil pickup tube that extends down into the iol pan.

 

Gotcha. I think my plan from here is to finish removing the intake (which I recently replaced after the coolant passages cracked on the original), The drivers side valve cover, the timing cover and prepare to remove the passenger side head. Then I guess I'll prepare the lift the engine off the mounts a couple of inches and remove the oil pan. I may drain the oil into a clean contain and run it through a strainer to see if it picks up any debris. Being that there doesn't seem to be any oil flow to the passenger side head, and it wasn't driven long this way, gives me hope that oil didn't wash kibbles and bits down back into the pan. If the damage is isolated to this head I'm comfortable replacing it as well as inspecting the rest of the engine to make sure it didn't spread metal throughout. If I don't find the blockage I'll be leaning towards another engine I guess.

What's the word with aftermarket timing chain kits or should one really stick with OEM on parts like that?

 

Removing the timing cover revealed some interesting stuff. The passenger side chain guide was sitting as pictured below.



It had broken away from it's mounts and was clanking around against the timing cover. The tensioner seems to be holding fairly tight which is why it was running sorta smooth and staying in time.




The inside of the timing cover looks like this:


Could the oil starvation to the head and this failure be related somehow? Can a failed tensioner gasket cause oil flow starvation to the head? I need to find my factory manuals and see how the oil is routed through there.

 

yes, the chains are tensioned by oil flow