2005 5.4 3V with Bad Cam Follower (2nd incident)
 

In August 2010, my truck started misfiring and making a bad knock from the passenger side of the engine. The dealer wouldn't even really troubleshoot and wanted to swap the engine. I took it for another opinion at a highly regarded independent shop and they pulled the valve cover and saw that it was a bad roller on the cam follower and it had worn a groove in the cam lobe. They replaced both the follower and the cam and it ran like new. Last week, a tick developed on the passenger side again and started misfiring so I took it back to the same shop. They pulled the valve cover again and this time, a different follower had gone bad and put a groove in the lobe. I'm having them replace both again. Since it's really not that much more money in the grand scheme of things, I'm having all of the followers replaced on that side. My question is what could be causing this? The mechanic said that the engine overall is in great shape. I'm pretty anal about changing the oil every 5k miles and run only Mobil 1 EP 5w20.

There have been no problems with the drivers side at all. Any ideas on the cause?

Thanks.

Lash adjusters
 

The 5.4L 3V has an issues with oil flow on the passenger side when it comes to roller rockers usually around the number 2 and 3 cylinders. You can help this by running 5W20 only, change it often as well as no cheap oil filters. When a roller goes out on this side you should replace ALL the rollers as well as ALL the lash adjusters. On the 3V motor the lasher adjusters can NOT be removed with the cam in place. So if your replacing the cam, spend the extra few bucks and replace the lash adjusters.

As a side note you should check the screens on the VCT solenoids and listen for any cam phaser knock. People claim that a noisy phaser does not cause any issues but my opinion is that it puts added stress on the much smaller rockers of the 3V motor. (The 2 valve motor has much larger rocker arm bearings that can handle more load.)

Thanks for the reply Scooterdog. I am having all the rockers replaced this time. Last time it was just the bad one. I also had all of the lashers replaced last time as well as the phasers. The mechanic said they are all still fine. I'm hoping this will be the end of this problem. I do run the recommended weight oil and change it no later than every 5k miles. I use Mobil 1 Extended Performance oil and Mobil 1 filters. I see a lot of emphasis by a lot of people to use only Motorcraft filters. Do you think that it makes that much of a difference over the Mobil 1 filters?

Thanks again.

Mobil 1 filters are fine. I haven't seen or heard of any issues with the non-return valves on them.

The last time I replaced a rocker arm on a 5.4L 3V that was visibly shot, I very closely inspected all of them and found 3 more on that side that were just starting to deteriorate.

Mobil 1 filters are some of the best filters out there. They are designed for use with extended drain synthetic oils.