flying68
Full Access Members
They are operated by oil flow, at least they did on the 5.4l v8's. I have read that one of the fixes was to have higher flow / higher pressure oil pumps. There are videos online that describe how they work. The cold start rattle was caused by the nylon? locking pin breaking causing the phasers to rattle until oil pressure built up, then they would act normally. I would assume the design hasn't changed much since then.You lost me about halfway through...
I've had them replaced 2 times already potentially going back for a third after 3 weeks of having the second ones done. I think what you are trying to say is if the phasers are on the high or low side of the tolerances the internal block passage variance will always cause them to break.
From an engineering perspective you could have a bad phaser which would be fixed by replacing it, but if multiple phasers fail it would seem likely it is a block issue. I have no specific knowledge about it, just making an educated guess.