It may indicate low oil pressure.........

 

I'm gonna get one this weekend and check it.

When I was test driving it today, something different happened. My new battery was dead so I jumped it. When I drove it my battery warning light came on and off. Then eventually my abs light and park brake light came on. Shortly my dash gauges, headlights, interior lights, and radio were dead. I eventually lost power in the engine. Was it possible to blow a fuse while doing the vct solenoid disconnect test?

 

When I was test driving it today, something different happened. My new battery was dead so I jumped it. When I drove it my battery warning light came on and off. Then eventually my abs light and park brake light came on. Shortly my dash gauges, headlights, interior lights, and radio were dead. I eventually lost power in the engine. Was it possible to blow a fuse while doing the vct solenoid disconnect test?

 

New Motorcraft VCT solenoids can go bad, causing multiple codes. It happened to me. Pull them out and inspect them. On mine, a screen broke loose and wedged itself into the sliding mechanism. It's still very possible that the phasers themselves are bad.
When were the spark plugs changed? I almost here compression blowing by a loose plug?
You're having the electrical issues because the engine is running too slow to charge properly.

 

Merged threads, to ease confusion, one thread per topic please

 

Perhaps two separate problems...

Your first post was making me thinking about the passenger side vacuum elbow on the back of the intake manifold (2004 only I believe)...perhaps cracked or disconnected (look it up on the interweb)... it has 2 skinny red vacuum lines running to it (not sure where they go...perhaps IWE system)

The latter sounds like a bad or going bad altenator?

Just my $ 0.02...I hope you can find a fix!

 

Update. Finally got back to working on this thing. Between work and kid, I barely found timw til my vacation to get back at it. Alternator was bad btw. Opened her up to find a shattered guide on the passenger side. When I tried to position the intake lobes on the passenger side camshaft I ran into a problem:


I've been consulting Fordtechmakuloco on it and he gave me the following:
"Where is the upper guide for that side? What you can do in this situation with the chain still on is loosen the cam cap bolts until mid way so the cam is loose in the caps and really cannot actuate the valves anymore. Then remove the chains then you want to fully loosen the cam caps then proceed as shown in my video."

I kinda drew a blank as to what this meant because I wasn't sure about if the positioning of the lobes mattered about this point. When I asked about it, I got the following:

"At any point you can loosen the cam caps evenly part of the way to prevent valves from hitting
Once the cams are out you can proceed with removing all the timing components in any order as the valve can no longer be actuated nothing can dAmAge itself"

I'm still trying to wrap my head around it and seeing if anyone else had a different view on it to where I can better understand it.

 

IMO your engine is likely junk. '04 is the worst year for oil pressure issues. It would have been nice to check the oil pressure to the phasers/heads while it was running. For whatever reason, the passenger side head/ shows more damage typically than the driver's side. Pull off a camshaft cap, and see how it looks on the bearing surface. Check the trust on the crankshaft before you waste too much time and money. If the thrust is acceptable, put a Melling M360 oil pump in at the same time you are doing this work. Another option is to use the earlier style 2V cast steel chain tensioners that ratchet out and lock. They are way better than the crappy plastic tensioners used on these engines. I'd use real Ford phasers, but I heard Dorman has redesigned their junky phasers.

I truly wish you the best of luck. On my '04 I found the passenger head camshaft journals had melted due to low oil pressure at 120,000 miles. I paid to have the phasers done once, and I believe it was done before I bought the truck. The truck is at a shop getting a new engine installed. After labor and a bunch of parts, I'll have about $5800 in the install.

 

what did you ultimately end up doing

 

^^^

 

I wanted to cut the truck loose, since I've never loved it. After looking at several $15,000 trucks that were starting to rust, I decided just to put an engine in this one. It's at a buddy's shop getting the engine put in. I paid $3200 for a Eagle rebuilt engine. I believe they're actually rebuilt by AER in Texas who also rebuilds the Motorcraft engines. I'll have about $5500 in the swap including labor, hoses, ac compressor, alternator, ps pump and hoses, new exhaust manifords, starter... My truck is pretty clean with only 125,000 miles, so I'm going to keep rolling. I have two kids in college for another 2 years. I'll probably replace this truck with a 5 year old southern truck after I'm done paying for college.

OP any updates?