Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I saw the recent reply and am having some issues on my job on this motor.
Mine's not on an Expedition (though a couple years ago my son and I replaced the phasers on our 2010 Expedition 5.4L - that job was much easier), but a 2018 F-150 - same 3.5L Ecoboost.
I've done the research beforehand, bought all the parts from a local dealership at fortparts.com prices. I went ahead and got all the optional seals, etc as well as all the timing components and a new thermostat / seal as well (I saw a couple videos saying that customers had come back shortly after this job was done with overheating issues and the thermostat was the reason).
I'll do a write up afterwards regarding my job, but right now I'm stuck on a particularly frustrating problem.
I can't get the old phasers off. The bolts are so torqued on there that I've already stripped out two of the bolts. The first stripped bolt, I tried a large electric impact gun followed by a large breaker bar. I figured on that one, maybe the impact gun weakened the splines in the torx bolt, so I tried just using the breaker bar. Nope, that one stripped out as well. On those two, I'll end up having to cover everything except the phasers with plastic, then grinding them off. I have a feeling the other two will end up the same. Has anyone else had this issue? In all the videos I watched, the bolts either came straight out with just a bit of resistance or the video skipped past the part of breaking the bolts free.
I'll probably just move on with the grinding, but I'm curious what others' input will be. I thought about heating them, but I'm worried about doing damage to other components in the area so I won't do that.
Thoughts?
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