So, I acquired a 2004 F150, 5.4 3v, 4R75E, 4wd for $600. Has 200K miles. Trans was roasted. Engine seemed to run fine. Fortunately for me, I have a friend that sold his transmission shop and does a little side work out of his garage. When we pulled the trans, I thought I should probably replace the cam chains/phasers, etc. Good thing I did. The guides were in the oil pan in many pieces. Amazing this thing didn't make any cam chain noise at all... I had the brilliant thought of "re-timing" the cams in order to allow the phasers to advance the cams as well as retard them. I did my homework and checked to see if the valvetrain would tolerate the cams being advanced by one tooth. Cam sprockets have 42 teeth and one tooth equates to 17.14 deg of advance relative to the crank. At TDC, there was a boatload of piston to valve clearance. Sooooo... I went ahead and advanced the cams 1 tooth, reassembled everything, and slowly rolled the engine over by hand to make sure there was no piston/valve interference. Lo and behold, after getting the rebuilt tranny stuffed back in, it fired up! But as you can guess, instant CEL for cam timing and horrible idle quality. Would not stay running. I went through hours and hours of playing with cam timing tables and everything associated with the cam phaser function, and even tried playing with the MAF, IAC, and MAP sensor settings. No joy. No fiddling made a difference in how it ran... until I unplugged the cam sensors. I could disconnect one or the other, or both, and the idle would settle down and it would become drivable. A quick diagnostic of the cam sensors and the wiring/connectors found no issues. But with the cams advanced 17 deg, the engine quickly ran out of power much past 2,500 rpm. Lot's of torque down low.
Now, I am at the point where I've determined that the amount of timing error just isn't something that can be compensated for in the ECU. I'm about ready to pop the valve covers off and re-time back to stock. But, I had another brain fart... I have the old cam phasers and I disassembled them, made a fixture to "re-time" the trigger wheels to trick the ECU into thinking that the cams are timed correctly. And now I'm debating if I should give this a try... the sign of a true masochist.
I'm all for learning things the hard way. It's the way I've learned my whole life. Not saying I'm smart, just stubborn. Any thoughts? Ridicule? Constructive (or not so constructive) criticism? Please make any comments questioning my intelligence as entertaining as possible...