I am hoping someone can help me here... I am having some issues with a high mileage 2010 F150 that I purchased. It had a motor swap done on it, so it has 135k on the drive train (Motor, Trans, transfer case) but I am having nothing but problems with it. First I had a plugged fuel fill inlet so that it was taking me upwards of 20 minutes to fill the tank so a new inlet. Then I had a loose schrader valve. A broken resonator box, transmission sensor leak, and a VERY squeaky blower motor. That being said, I still have high hopes that this F150 will be better than my silverado.

This brings me to my current problem. When I start the motor (5.4 3V) it cranks for longer than it should and then blows a puff of white/blue smoke. After a second, the smoke goes away and it idles fine. It does idle pretty high until it warms up and drops to where it should sit. This weekend, I didn't give it time to warm up and put it into gear while the idle was still high. When I did this, it clicked into gear and immediately killed the engine. When I went to restart it, it cranked for an excessive amount of time before starting and again blew smoke when it started. It wanted to die, but I gave it a bit of gas to keep it going. When it calmed down, I put it into gear and started driving, it then gave me P0175 and P0172 codes.

My initial gut said valve seals, but the more I read, the more I think it could be a leaky injector and potentially a broken catalytic converter. It shouldn't matter too much, but I changed 7/8 of the spark plugs and ignition coils, I couldn't figure out how to change the 8th one as there appears to be a small pebble in by the spark plug and I have no idea how to get it out of there as its the cylinder closest the fire wall.

Any advice on what could be causing this or how the heck to troubleshoot it?

 

Use a scribe to loosen the pebble and try to either blow or vacuum it out.

This does sound like leaky injectors. If the cats aren't plugged yet, they will be pretty soon if you don't fix it. Plugged cats will cause it to be way down on power, a muffler shop can test them for excessive backpressure. Continued leaky injectors can also cause a hydrolock.

To test for leaky injectors, lift the fuel rail along with the injectors and place paper under the injectors. Turn on the key, if any are leaking you will see it.

Hate to say this on a Ford forum, but the 5.4 3V was not one of Ford's better ideas. The truck is great, the engine not so great.

 

Fuel injectors did the trick. Thanks for the tip! Now on to the next problem... When I was cruising on the highway with the cruise on, I got a strange grinding type noise. It sounds like it is almost coming from the passenger side wheel bearing or somewhere in that area. Any ideas here? It only seems to happen when the cruise is on, when I turn it off it stops (almost right away). When I drive down the highway without cruise control, it doesn't seem to make any of the sound. As a side note, I replaced both wheel bearings less than 2k miles ago. I did find an amazing write up on IWE, sounds like that may be my starting point for this one...
https://www.f150forum.com/f72/how-di...m-esof-186872/