Like many of you, I have ( had ) a cam pahasr problem, anything over 2300 RPM for very long at there was a 50/50 chance of the engine stumbling. I was talking with a shop manager, former long time mechanic, while it was in for a rear main seal replacement about the cost of getting them replaced. He told me something surprising. That most of the time it's a problem of being plugged / gummed up that is the problem. When he did a few of his own he merely took them out, soaked them for a while, and then reinstalled them. Since then he came up with a simple solution to get them working again.

We changed the oil, but instead of filling with 7 qts of 5-30 ( high mileage ), we filled with 6 qts of 0-20... and one quart of transmission fluid!

The transmission fluid acts like a cleaner to flush and clean the motor, including the cam phasars. I wasn't really looking forward to several thousand dollars in replacing the phasars, so what the hell.

Now driving it the hour back home I was about to go back and wring his neck. This truck drove like Christine reincarnated! Stumbling and bucking, dying off when I came to a stop. He told me it would act up, but that would be normal and to give it a thousand miles or so, road trips preferred.

I parked it for a week and planned on driving it on a couple of road trips planned between Kansas City and St. Louis. Now on the highway it was just fine, the normal of keeping my RPM's below 2300 to keep it in line. By the time I got back from St. Louis it was acting much better, but not near what it was before we put the special oil change in it.

So I did as instructed and changed to regular oil after the first thousand miles, my 5-30 high mileage, it has close to 300,000 on the long block. The second trip out was MUCH better. By the time I made St. Louis again it was almost back to 'normal'. Several times on the interstate I found myself running around 2700 to 2800 RPM. Something it would normally have stumbled on if left there for very long.

By the time I returned to Kansas City I was tickled pink! I had my truck back!

Was it as quiet as before the phasars started acting up... NO

Was it a hundred times better and I didn't have to worry about the cruise control kicking the RPM's up and making the engine stumble... HELL YES!!!!

I still have to change just the filter when I hit the second thousand mile to get rid of anything left floating in the system after the special fill.

It's still has some clatter, but nothing near what it was. It now runs smoother than I can ever remember. All due to a simple oil change.

He said this works in around 80% of the cases, those that are just plugged / gummed up. If it doesn't then you have truly defective phasars and replacing them is the only option.


This might make a good sticky for all the 5.4 owners out there.

 

I have a 07 f150 5.4 that has had some issues lately. 190k on it. Just changed plugs and cops. Driving on the Hwy watching the timing live with my kbd2 app the timing advance is all over the place. I think it should be in the 25 to 35 range, but it stays at 2 - 5 degree occasionally spiking to 35. Could this be sticking cam phasers, low oil? Do you think your fix would help?

 

I can't say for sure, as this was passed on to me by another mechanic. I can only repeat what he told me, it can't hurt. Just be prepared to have something that acts like Christine reincarnated at first.

That being said I would think that the earlier you catch it the better off you would be. I did this at roughly the 300,000 mile mark and had put probably close to 100,000 after the initial symptoms had appeared but nursed it along.

We jumped to the 0-20W from my regular oil because of the time I had had the problem. You might be able to just change the filter or drain a quart and top off with the transmission fluid if your symptoms are just appearing.

As I said, in my case he recommended doing this in conjunction with a planned road trip to eliminate some of the problems of driving a funky vehicle in stop and go traffic.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Not to rain on yer parade but this is wrong on many levels. Many years ago, the use of straight weight oils was normal. Many thought that using a heavier oil than a 30 was the thing to do. Oil formulations had few cleaners, many were non-detergent oils. Engines in these scenarios were prone to sludge especially during the winter and for engines that saw short trips. Remember, we didn't have positive crankcase ventilation until the mid 60's. The fix to a sludged engine was to put either a 20wt oil in it or a qt of ATF. Both were thinner oils and were capable of better penetration of the sludge and most had more solubility. This is what the old fix was. Today, we mostly use a 20 viscosity oil at operating temps. The ATF has little to no detergents in the mix. It won't have any more solubility than any motor oil out there and todays motor oils will out clean any ATF due to the additive package the motor oil has that won't be in any ATF. Probabilities are high what fixed your issue was the 0w-20 oil. More than likely it has more solubility than what was previously in the engine. The ATF had nothing to do with it.
Can it do damage adding ATF to the oil? Yes, but it depends on what oil you're adding it to. If the oil you are using meets minimum standards only, you have now cut the minimum additives that are required by roughly 20%. Wear will be accelerated and I'd expect to see massive wear at the cams. Not a smart thing to do.
What I have seen "fix" a few of the stuck phasers is dose of a 5w-20 ester based oil. The only one out there at the time was G Oil. I have no clue if you can even buy it anymore but the lubricity and solubility of G Oil was the best in the industry. You MIGHT be able to do a change using Redline Oil which is roughly 12% ester. It could do the trick or might be a waste of money. YMMV.