My truck is an 07 F-150 supercab 4x4 with the 5.4L V8 engine. I've owned it since new as my personal use vehicle, so it's only seen easy cruising highway miles. It's been 100% flawless until I took it in for servicing at Ford this week, where it developed (possibly coincidentally I suppose) a weird vibration in the engine.

I asked only for a 100,000 service, my last under extended warranty & service plan, since the truck now has 100,800 on it. The only thing out of the ordinary they probably did was change sparkplugs. They did find a bad ball joint though, so changed out the left front ball joint.

Upon roadtesting after, they discovered it has a weird vibration coming from teh engine now. I confirmed with the tech that it definitely wasn't there before I took it in. I should've payed more detailed attention to it when I tried it in their shop, but yesterday I knew they wanted to do more diagnosing today so didn't figure they'd still be scratching their heads after their master tech has worked on it for 8hrs over the last 2 days.

It really does feel & sound like a shudder/shake when you step on the gas, then of course backs down once you let off. It's definitely engine, as I was confirming it for the service manager while sitting in the shop, no driving. He said apparently it's worse when the engine is warmer (it'd been sitting in their shop for a bit).

I'm no mechanic by no means, but I'd have started with what they did on the engine service, & yes he said they did check for a bad plug after the service. Then move on to what might've happened during the left front ball joint change, but he confirmed they checked that they didn't knock any wires loose or anything. It's not throwing any codes, nor is the check engine light on. My backwoods small town Ford dealer says they've never seen anything like this, taking to calling it the mystery machine.

They did pull the valve covers today, but I don't know what they were looking for that they didn't find. I know now from reading that the issue could be injectors (at least on 05's by the sticky) or could be cam phasers or VCT solenoid (which I don't know what those are or if they might cause this).

Any advice that I can talk to the service manager about tomorrow would be greatly appreciated. They mightn't have seen anything like it before, but I'm definitely not the only one who's had this problem out of all these trucks that are on the road. Thanking anyone in advance for help.

 

The 5.4 3v engine 2004-2007 have issues with sparkplugs breaking during removal. Did they say anything about problems removing your old plugs? Seems odd to me that after they changed the plugs you have a drivability issue. Ask to see your old sparkplugs, all of them and ask if any of the plugs gave them problems during removal. Another thought on your truck is when they changed the left balljoint. These trucks have a 4x4 system that includes a IWE design for the 4x4 front wheel drive. It is vacum operated and there is a vac line attached to both IWE's just behind the front hubs. These lines come off fairly easy and with that said it is possible the leftside vac line is off giving you a possible vac leak. Not sure if it would cause the symptoms you are experiencing because there is a selonoid up stream but its just a thought. There may be problems with a sparkplug or coil but I would think the mechanic would be on top of it. I know they said they checked but thats where I would focus. Good luck.

 

What else appears odd to me anyways is that you stated the pulled the valve covers. If my truck had a vibration and they pulled the valve covers to see whats going on right away I'd be like WTF?

Why would they assume there's an issue there? Did they drop porcelain in there when they removed a plug?

 

if its engine. something may have fallen into one of the cyliders during the plug change. its amazing how much crap accumulates in the plug well. i always use compressed air to blow any debris out of the plug well before i remove the plugs. its also possible that some porcelin may have broken off the plug and is keeping a valve open, stuck to a valve seat of valve face. or if they used anit seize on the new plugs, it may have fouled the plug.

 

Thanks Dynotech, Fatty4x4, & Falcon61 for all your help. Muchly appreciated. Got it back today safe & sound. There were no broken plugs, though I didn't follow the advice to ask to see them. They say they pulled the valve covers to have a look at what was happening when nothing else seemed to make sense.

What the final answer was? They overfilled it with oil when doing the service. Which I understand from a mechanic friend could cause an engine vibration, though even he didn't think of such a thing. It's back to 100% now that they put the proper amount in.

I'm considering this one closed as far as a problem, all that's left to do is get proper paperwork & documentation from them for all they did incase I run into some other issue down the road that results from this. But I'm sure it's all good. Just want to thankyou all for your help! I knew I came to the right forum, there's a wealth of info on here.

 

Glad it worked out. That oil overfill will cause is a vibration. I went to Wixom one time for a vibration concern on a bunch of Lincolns coming off the asembly line. We found everyone of them were about two quarts over full. The automatic oil fill back at the engine plant had malfunctioned on a few racks of engines that were shipped to Wixom. Anyway just letting you know the dealer isn't telling you a story it will generate a vibration on these engines. Take care.