I'm sure many of you guys have heard of the awful noise on start up that a lot of people complain about in our 3.5 EB engines.
Well a few months back I brought my car to the dealership to have this looked at. it only happened on cold starts or if its been sitting for over an hour or 2, but when you start it, you could hear a terrible clacking sound (almost sounds like a knock) for roughly 2 -5 seconds. The sound is a bit embarrassing for me at least in front of many other car friends and to have a noise that sounds like a rod knock coming from your 2010 SHO. They came to the conclusion that the oil filter was bleeding off air pressure and that's what caused the low oil pressure on start up to make you hear the noise it was making.
After the oil change it was much better but it was still there, instead of 2-5 seconds it would only last for 1-2 seconds. Still a noise I am all to familiar with in many of my mustangs over the years. With 230 miles left on my factory power-train warranty I brought it back in to have it evaluated again.
This time they tried to tell me that ford had put out a news letter saying that this noise is perfectly normal for the 3.5 EB engines and does not affect the power or longevity of the engine. I explained how I have heard many of EB engines and the noises they make and that was certainly not one of them and that they need to listen to it again because it's not normal. Anyway the next morning they contacted me saying I was right and there going it look into it. Later that day I stopped by to pick up a rental car and while I was there I looked at my car in the service shop and saw it up on a lift and the entire engine and transmission was on the ground. Pretty shocked to say the least but they say that was the easiest way to look at the timing chains which is what they were figuring the noise was. Was pretty cool seeing both of my turbos just sitting right out in the open!
When I talked to my service adviser he said that the secondary timing chain on the passenger side and the main timing chain on the driver side were both loose and few other things, its on the paper I got but its in the car. ( I can get it later if anyone wants specific details on what was replaced ). They finished it yesterday and said it seemed to be fine now but wanted to keep it over night to be sure so they could do a cold start to verify its gone. Got a call while I was at work saying the noise is no longer present and everything is good to go. I was still a bit skeptical that it was gonna have some kind of noise but not as bad, but to my surprise it made 0 noise, almost sounded like a electric car! At least from what i was use to , it did.
The best part was that everything was paid for by ford due to the factory warranty, I even got a free oil change since they had the timing cover off during the process.
Sorry for the long post but I hope some people find this because it seems to be pretty common in a lot of our 3.5 Eco Boost engines. I got the car with 50k on it and it looks like holding off until the factory warranty was off to buy a tuner, exhaust, intake, meth, etc really payed off.
