Poor quality on Ford Reman engine

[Dustin Gebhardt]

After 12 days into our 17-day vacation road trip, my ‘07 decided to cause problems as we neared Yosemite. The odometer had rolled over to 300k a few miles ago. The temperature gauge dropped to zero, I got a low temperature warning, the AC turned off, and my transmission shifting went nuts (delayed shifts, hard jerks). I always travel with a computer and ForScan, which showed my a P0128 fault, and trans shift error. Since parts were very limited there, we pushed on to Las Vegas and parked our RV at Circus Circus. Now with better cell reception, I figured that I would attempt to replace the CHT sensor (cylinder head temperature), but I couldn’t seem to locate it on the engine. I removed the alternator, hoping to find it on the crossover or in the intake valley near the front of the engine. I ended up seeing it way back in the intake valley, passenger side between the rear two cylinders. Oh boy. With my limited traveling tool set I started to pull the fuel rail and intake off. I ended up finding that the wiring harness for the CHT was pinched and melted between the intake manifold and the head. See photos. You can clearly see the clean areas on the rear intake port that match the squished pattern on the intake gasket and the wiring harness. 2 days later (the new harness was shipped from another dealership) the Expy was put back together and working normally.

note that this was a genuine Ford reman engine from 2013 that the previous owner had installed. I don’t know how many miles are on the actual engine.

 

[BP 09]

The reman 5.4 engines don’t come with an intake installed, so this sounds like an error made by the installer and not an issue with reman engines. Ford direct reman engines are actually the preferred choice by many Ford techs, most notably fordtechmakuloco.

 

[Dustin Gebhardt]

I wasn’t aware of that. I thought that they came fully assembled. Thanks for the correction.

When I did my timing job 2 years ago, I noticed the old style tensioners. So even back in 2013, roughly 6 years after my 2007 was made) they were still using the crappy tensioners. But otherwise this engine has been solid.

 

[bodabdan]

If you had to stab a fully assembled engine into the engine bay you would be lucky not to break any of the plastic stuff on top. You would also have a ton of fun reaching some of the stuff in back. It's usually just block and heads, intake goes on later as stated above.
Lucky for you that's probably one of the shortest sections of factory harness.ever made, there are much more involved harnesses just inches away. Glad you found it, should run better now.

 

[rothstar]

Congratulations for getting that fixed on the road! I've started putting every tool that I use for a job into a travelling Expe fixing kit. Ford did a pretty good job of using a small set of wrench sizes for nearly everything on the engine.