A long post about long time issues with cam correlation codes. (Carnage pics)

[HKusp]

I have some pretty good news to report today. After having the car sit for the last 7 months, last Friday I trailered it to a local shop that has some pretty good detectives working there and had them try and figure out what was wrong and it seems they have solved the dilemma. To summarize what was going on as described to me by their shop foreman who admittedly is an LS guy but is very on the ball-

He initially got the car running and let it warm up for a while, then drained the oil and looked at it and was concerned so he texted me and asked if the car was on 93 or E85. I said 93, and asked why. He then sent me a video of the oil but on my phone I wasn't sure what I was looking at and asked him if there was glitter in the oil. He said no, but it looks like a caramel latte from Dunkin Donuts. At first I was concerned because the oil and filter had about 40 miles on it, but Phil reminded me that we had put Ceratec in it and I mentioned that to the mechanic and he said "Ah, that explains THAT"

He then mentioned that the car would initially fire up and run smooth for a short time, but would then get to where it was running rough as described above in post 25. They hooked it up to their Snap-on scanner and found that once the car settled down and was trying to idle the PCM was commanding negative 4 degrees on each of the cams, but the passenger side exhaust cam was going negative 35 degrees and the car was obviously running very poorly.

He pulled the cam cover and yanked out the brand new solenoid and bench tested it with a power probe. It would actuate/activate with 12volts. He and another worker there kept fooling with it and all of a sudden a glob of something he described as blackish gray with the consistency of assembly lube flopped out of it on the bench and then when they put power to it, it clicked and actually started working. So he called Ford and bout a new one. He re-installed it and got the car mostly buttoned up to where it would run and it sounded right and acted right. He took it for a little test ride and said it seemed much better to him. The cams are doing as commanded and the car is idling with cylinder head temp around 203 degrees, normal oil pressure, etc. For the purpose of testing, he put Motorcraft 5W30 synthetic blend in the car right now and if all goes well, we'll be putting 5w-50 back in.

So I went down to the shop and we threw a dealer tag on the car so I could road test it. It fired up and sounded good. I took it out onto I95 and and the beltway and ran it up a little bit again, probably never taking it above 5500-6000rpm. I was watching and listening for anything out of the ordinary and all was well for the most part. It was relatively warm, 85 degrees, and the bottom of the air box wasn't installed and neither was the plastic belly pan on the bottom of the car.

I was running around in a gear lower than I would normally in most situations sometimes to, so 3rd gear when I normally would be in 4th or 5th, depending, just to stress it a little and listen to it rev a bit. I saw cylinder head temps rise into the low 220's after a few hard pulls but it would go down when I was driving more normally and got down to 210-215 pretty quickly. I don't think it is having any issues and I also don't have the PP1/2 bigger radiator on my car, which I am probably going to do, plus as soon as I get it back and we can verify it's ready I am going to switch it back to 5w-50 and start working on getting it tuned to run on ethanol which runs so much cooler anyway, it should be a totally moot point.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, as hopefully, I'll have the car back by next weekend and we can go from there. Yay!!

Sponsored

 

[Adam the Lighting Guy]

I have some pretty good news to report today. After having the car sit for the last 7 months, last Friday I trailered it to a local shop that has some pretty good detectives working there and had them try and figure out what was wrong and it seems they have solved the dilemma. To summarize what was going on as described to me by their shop foreman who admittedly is an LS guy but is very on the ball-

He initially got the car running and let it warm up for a while, then drained the oil and looked at it and was concerned so he texted me and asked if the car was on 93 or E85. I said 93, and asked why. He then sent me a video of the oil but on my phone I wasn't sure what I was looking at and asked him if there was glitter in the oil. He said no, but it looks like a caramel latte from Dunkin Donuts. At first I was concerned because the oil and filter had about 40 miles on it, but Phil reminded me that we had put Ceratec in it and I mentioned that to the mechanic and he said "Ah, that explains THAT"

He then mentioned that the car would initially fire up and run smooth for a short time, but would then get to where it was running rough as described above in post 25. They hooked it up to their Snap-on scanner and found that once the car settled down and was trying to idle the PCM was commanding negative 4 degrees on each of the cams, but the passenger side exhaust cam was going negative 35 degrees and the car was obviously running very poorly.

He pulled the cam cover and yanked out the brand new solenoid and bench tested it with a power probe. It would actuate/activate with 12volts. He and another worker there kept fooling with it and all of a sudden a glob of something he described as blackish gray with the consistency of assembly lube flopped out of it on the bench and then when they put power to it, it clicked and actually started working. So he called Ford and bout a new one. He re-installed it and got the car mostly buttoned up to where it would run and it sounded right and acted right. He took it for a little test ride and said it seemed much better to him. The cams are doing as commanded and the car is idling with cylinder head temp around 203 degrees, normal oil pressure, etc. For the purpose of testing, he put Motorcraft 5W30 synthetic blend in the car right now and if all goes well, we'll be putting 5w-50 back in.

So I went down to the shop and we threw a dealer tag on the car so I could road test it. It fired up and sounded good. I took it out onto I95 and and the beltway and ran it up a little bit again, probably never taking it above 5500-6000rpm. I was watching and listening for anything out of the ordinary and all was well for the most part. It was relatively warm, 85 degrees, and the bottom of the air box wasn't installed and neither was the plastic belly pan on the bottom of the car.

I was running around in a gear lower than I would normally in most situations sometimes to, so 3rd gear when I normally would be in 4th or 5th, depending, just to stress it a little and listen to it rev a bit. I saw cylinder head temps rise into the low 220's after a few hard pulls but it would go down when I was driving more normally and got down to 210-215 pretty quickly. I don't think it is having any issues and I also don't have the PP1/2 bigger radiator on my car, which I am probably going to do, plus as soon as I get it back and we can verify it's ready I am going to switch it back to 5w-50 and start working on getting it tuned to run on ethanol which runs so much cooler anyway, it should be a totally moot point.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, as hopefully, I'll have the car back by next weekend and we can go from there. Yay!!

 

[HKusp]

Well, the car is running better but I am still experiencing some issues. It has an exhaust leak which sounds terrible, on the passenger side that I have to get worked out, but it's STILL throwing timing codes. I spoke with someone "in the know" on these engines and he mentioned that the manual on rebuilding these engines does not mention to use assembly lube, it states that you are use engine oil as assembly lubricant. That explains why I had the issue with the exhaust cam solenoid.

Beyond that, I had some soft codes stored which I expected, so I cleared them out and took the car for a ride to get fuel and run some errands. I had a guy in a 2wd Chevy pickup truck with a kayak in the back try and keep me from getting in front of him from a traffic light on route 40 so I gave it the beans for the first time and the small CEL came back on. I figured it was the codes that are still present because the base tune on the car is for a PP1 car and the PCM is looking for a rear diff temp and my car is not wired for it. When I got the car home I pulled codes. In addition to the codes for it not being a PP1 car, I got some misfire codes and a cam correlation code, now a driver side intake cam like before all the latest trouble. I am going to contemplate the next move, but I am not very optimistic moving forward.

 

[Cobra Jet]

I’ve read through the thread kind of quick - seen the issues presented in the first thread and a few later on in…

My question to you would be are you using an aftermarket crank sprocket?
There’s been threads in here over the years that people have received aftermarket crank sprockets with incorrect timing marks on the crank sprockets (this is just one example):
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/threads/psa-boundary-crank-sprocket-marks-incorrect.146665/

Just putting the above out there if you’re still having timing issues. Also IIRC, don’t the VCT’s play a role in timing setup too?

 

[HKusp]

I’ve read through the thread kind of quick - seen the issues presented in the first thread and a few later on in…

My question to you would be are you using an aftermarket crank sprocket?
There’s been threads in here over the years that people have received aftermarket crank sprockets with incorrect timing marks on the crank sprockets (this is just one example):
https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/threads/psa-boundary-crank-sprocket-marks-incorrect.146665/

Just putting the above out there if you’re still having timing issues. Also IIRC, don’t the VCT’s play a role in timing setup too?

It is a stock crank sprocket. If I remember correctly, I even replaced it with a new one because I had heard that they can get messed up by being near things that are magnetic and when the car was apart for the initial engine replacement, I couldn't guarantee that that wheel wasn't stored near a magnetic parts tray so I eliminated the possibility by buying a new one. It's been such a long saga, I believe that I did that, but I may have just THOUGHT about doing that and didn't complete the task, sadly. I have to go back and look.

I have an appointment to take the car to Revolution Automotive, in Rosedale, Maryland next Tuesday. They are kind of a big deal in the Mustang world and are about 20 minutes from my house. They do Vaughn Gittings cars and a lot of others. I stopped by there yesterday on my lunch break and gave them as much of the story as I could remember, verbally. They are going to start by removing the PP1 based tuning on the car and start with the appropriate base tune for my car, which is a non-PP car. They are going to dyno tune it, then see where that leads them as far as diagnostically moving forward. Whether that be compression testing, checking the cam timing, leak down testing, etc. We shall see where that leads and of course, I will update with any and all findings reported to me.

 

[Zrussian13]

It is a stock crank sprocket. If I remember correctly, I even replaced it with a new one because I had heard that they can get messed up by being near things that are magnetic and when the car was apart for the initial engine replacement, I couldn't guarantee that that wheel wasn't stored near a magnetic parts tray so I eliminated the possibility by buying a new one. It's been such a long saga, I believe that I did that, but I may have just THOUGHT about doing that and didn't complete the task, sadly. I have to go back and look.

I have an appointment to take the car to Revolution Automotive, in Rosedale, Maryland next Tuesday. They are kind of a big deal in the Mustang world and are about 20 minutes from my house. They do Vaughn Gittings cars and a lot of others. I stopped by there yesterday on my lunch break and gave them as much of the story as I could remember, verbally. They are going to start by removing the PP1 based tuning on the car and start with the appropriate base tune for my car, which is a non-PP car. They are going to dyno tune it, then see where that leads them as far as diagnostically moving forward. Whether that be compression testing, checking the cam timing, leak down testing, etc. We shall see where that leads and of course, I will update with any and all findings reported to me.

Good luck man! This has been some long, on going drama...

 

[HKusp]

Good luck man! This has been some long, on going drama...

Thanks, man. It's been a test for sure. Making me crazy(er).

 

[HKusp]

Let me start this post by saying, I believe the shop had the best of intentions and based off of their analysis, I understand where they are saying what they are saying. They may, in fact, ultimately be proven correct. But...

They ran a static compression test and cylinder 5 is down apparently 6%. They did a cylinder balance test and all 4 off the drivers side cylinders are off. The drivers side exhaust cam is 16+ degrees out and the drivers side intake cam is off by 11+ degrees. He suspects that there is piston to valve contact and at this point the engine needs to be replaced. He did not do a borescope view of the pistons. He felt like it was a foregone conclusion that it wasn't worth tearing into it and wasting my money, which I can appreciate him thinking that way, especially if he proves out to be correct.

That being said, the shop I had it at that got it running seems to disagree and I am friends with the owner and shop foreman. The shop foreman was the one that figured out the issue with the solenoid and got the car running better. He actually DID do a borescope just before I took it to the last shop and he said he looked at every piston and there was no evidence of any piston to valve contact.

I am taking the car back to them and they are going to pull all the timing components off the car and start fresh, set the cams and timing again. We'll go from there. I may be throwing good money after bad at this point but I have to try before going full new motor again....dammit.

 

[Timbuck]

Arrhhh. That’s no fun Jason. It does look like you are 1 tooth out , which would add up to the degree’s you are showing. And as far as I understand your still with in the range on a gen 3 that you won’t have piston to valve clearance issues. If your 2 teeth out then your in the danger zone of contact.

I sure feel for you , I’m about to pull my built engine for the 3rd time due to my chasing my oil burning problem. We have narrowed it down to oil ring problem. We think the Mahle 2mm oil ring has somehow jumped in the transition from ring tool to bore and the keeper ring ends have overlapped leading to less tension and oil burn. Must use a cnc machined tapered tool with these.
Doing it at my engine builders workshop , as 30 years of building engines this is the first time a ring problem has happened. He is beside him self and still questioning how it oils be possable. But the only way to find out if engine out.
Unfortunately Car runs like a absolute dream , just burns oil on 4 cylinders. 1L per 1000kms.

 

[HKusp]

Arrhhh. That’s no fun Jason. It does look like you are 1 tooth out , which would add up to the degree’s you are showing. And as far as I understand your still with in the range on a gen 3 that you won’t have piston to valve clearance issues. If your 2 teeth out then your in the danger zone of contact.

I sure feel for you , I’m about to pull my built engine for the 3rd time due to my chasing my oil burning problem. We have narrowed it down to oil ring problem. We think the Mahle 2mm oil ring has somehow jumped in the transition from ring tool to bore and the keeper ring ends have overlapped leading to less tension and oil burn. Must use a cnc machined tapered tool with these.
Doing it at my engine builders workshop , as 30 years of building engines this is the first time a ring problem has happened. He is beside him self and still questioning how it oils be possable. But the only way to find out if engine out.
Unfortunately Car runs like a absolute dream , just burns oil on 4 cylinders. 1L per 1000kms.

It certainly is NOT fun and I absolutely feel for you in your situation as well, Tim. I'll just keep trudging along until I get backed into a corner on this thing. Hopefully I can save this built motor, but if not I'll come up with a back-up plan. I have some ideas brewing for that.

Sponsored