I recently purchased a 2001 Style side 4.0 4X4 with 96000 miles. The truck is super clean but after reading all of the horror stories about timing tensioners, and broken guides I was wondering if by taking off the valve covers you can see if the guides have broken. At cold start for less than a second there is I guess the chain rattle sound and then it is gone. I'm hoping they are intact and I can just replace the two outside tensioners. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Looper2001

 

Welcome to the forum

Replace the two long chain tensioners with Motorcraft tensioners, not 3rd party

The rattle at startup was what broke the guides, then you would get rattle at higher RPMs

Your guides are not broken, YET


Original problem was the old tensioners would lose spring tension, so would allow the chains to bang on the guides until Oil Pressure got high enough to take over from the springs

The rear chain tensioner was the worst and also the easiest to change so do that one ASAP


And yes you could remove valve covers to check guides, and if loose then it is broken

 

Thanks, have my fingers crossed they are not loose.