[jason8225]

My friend's grandma has an 01 SE Vulcan that somehow got a bad valve spring. They were on their way home from a trip to Florida and somehow determined that they got a bad valve spring. Any ideas on what could have cause this??

 

[loveroffords]

hey jason8255,

did it happen to be #1 or#6?

have not seen this on a taurus, but have seen multiple times on ranger 3.0.

seems to always happen on cyl #1 on ranger, right under the fresh air intake for the pcv system, during cooler weather. theory is that cold air is hitting a hot valve spring, thus making it weak till it cracks. let me know which cyl it was, kinda interested, may confront ford on the problem. mmmmm i smell recall/TSB.

i.e. warranty work.

 

[jason8225]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I will ask him which cylinder it was and try to get some more details.

 

[Rockledge]

Originally posted by loveroffords@Jan 23 2004, 10:39 PM

hey jason8255,

did it happen to be #1 or#6?

have not seen this on a taurus, but have seen multiple times on ranger 3.0.

seems to always happen on cyl #1 on ranger, right under the fresh air intake for the pcv system, during cooler weather. theory is that cold air is hitting a hot valve spring, thus making it weak till it cracks. let me know which cyl it was, kinda interested, may confront ford on the problem. mmmmm i smell recall/TSB.

i.e. warranty work.

Interesting ....what years have you seen this happen on the Ranger 3.0L? Did it happen to you?

 

[silvapain]

Doesn't the baffle in the valve cover protect the valve springs? A solution might be to put in a separate pcv filter, so that it can draw in air from the engine bay, were it's warmer.

 

[mobiuslogic]

Does the bad valve spring cause a rattling noise at times and what feels like a loss of power when it is rattling and generally decreased gas mileage? If so, then I've got a busted one too, because I've got all those problems.

-mobiuslogic

 

[Patrick Norris]

Originally posted by mobiuslogic@Jan 24 2004, 01:23 AM
Does the bad valve spring cause a rattling noise at times and what feels like a loss of power when it is rattling and generally decreased gas mileage? If so, then I've got a busted one too, because I've got all those problems.

-mobiuslogic

A bad spring would stop one valve from opening so if it were intake the cylinder wouldn't fire and you would have a bad miss and if it were exhaust you would have a backfire because the combustion wouldn't get out of the cylinder and when the intake valve opened it would run back through the intake.

I think a valve spring breaking would be very rare and not something more then one person with the same car and engine would experience. I think I read on Rogue performance that vulcan springs are pretty sufficient in size to hand the rpm of the engine. Unless you have a cam that is increasing the duration significantly and weakening the spring. The other thing is if someone was doing service and removed rockers and reinstalled the rocker with the lift up. The spring will be over compressed for some reason if you install a rocker if the lifter is up.

 

[Bob Gervais]

Originally posted by loveroffords@Jan 23 2004, 09:39 PM
during cooler weather. theory is that cold air is hitting a hot valve spring, thus making it weak till it cracks.

Impossible on the Taurus vulcan. The PCV is in the rear (left hand for the RWD Ranger) valve cover. There is a baffle on the valve cover to prevent the valve from sucking up oil. Also, cold air is not drawn through the valve, hot oil gasses are. The temps of the valve spring and the oil gasses should be very close.

Jason, was the car disassemled to find out the valve spring is broken?

 

[jason8225]

I probably won't have any more info about this til Monday, but I'll let you guys know. Thanks for all the input.

 

[jason8225]

For some reason my friend stopped caring about this.

I think mainly b/c it's now in the hands of the stealership and being serviced under warranty. I really want to get the info out of him though so that we are aware of what is going on if we have this problem with any of our cars. So I'll post any additional info. I get, but in the mean time keep brain storming.