The dreaded Blue Smoke curse

[Marauder2005]

Well last week my Marauder started getting the
blue smoke start ups in the morning (wow what a cloud)
with 10,500 miles. I know its been a topic in the past
but what did your dealerships do about it? My lincoln Mercury
dealership (Acton Lincoln of MA.) is a "RAV' dealership.
Im not sure if you guys are familiar with this term.
They are one of only a few dealerships that are
"RAV" and they buy up all the low miles Ford Lincoln, Mercurys
at Ford Auctions that have problems that other dealerships cant figure
the problem. They claim "If we cant find the problem no one else will"
Just wanted to know if your dealerships solved the problem for you and
want to see what my dealerships gonna say.
Thanks
-Mike

[TripleTransAm]

New head. No more blue smoke. That was my solution.

1 year later, still no blue smoke and my driving style has not changed (very easy going with few opportunities to open her up).

[Marauder2005]

New head. No more blue smoke. That was my solution.

1 year later, still no blue smoke and my driving style has not changed (very easy going with few opportunities to open her up).
Oh no.... I assume thats the problem. Thank you TransAm

[David Morton]

When I worked for GM we used to have the "blue smoke on start-up" complaint on the mouse motors and 3/4 mouse motors (4.3L V6). First off, if the intake guides or seals are bad, it's gonna smoke all the time at idle. We found the fix for this complaint was to install valve guide seals on the exhaust valve guides because the factory wasn't putting any oil control on them at all! Nothing, nada was on the exhaust valve stem or guide by design. The engineers reasoned that because the exhaust ports were always under some kind of pressure that oil control wasn't needed there because that pressure would always blow the oil back into the engine while it was running and the extra oil would make the guide last longer. So what was causing the blue smoke was that soon after or during break in, the guides would open up just enough to let whatever oil was on the stems and retainers to drain into the exhaust ports, usually on an overnight cold soak. It was only a couple of drops but that's enough to make a lot of smoke in the carport..

Replacing the head seems an extreme measure so I'm wondering:

1) Do our heads not have exhaust valve guide seals like those Chevys?,

2) If they do have exhaust valve guide seals, and they are replacing the head because the exhaust guides are going bad (it would have to be very bad), wouldn't the exhaust valves be going bad too causing backfires and such? and

3)If it's not the guides that are causing the problem, what is wrong with the head that is? A porous casting? A crack?

I suppose the factory may be approving replacement of the head just to be sure, after all they probably aren't doing 10,000 of these a year like Chevrolet was.

[Mike Poore]

They claim "If we cant find the problem no one else will"
Just wanted to know if your dealerships solved the problem for you and
want to see what my dealerships gonna say.
-Mike
Just make sure your RAV dealership doesn't "see" any mods. Bone stock, is what they want to see, from what other guys have posted. ;)

[TripleTransAm]

2) If they do have exhaust valve guide seals, and they are replacing the head because the exhaust guides are going bad (it would have to be very bad), wouldn't the exhaust valves be going bad too causing backfires and such? and


I apologize... I was too brief in my quick reply, chalk it up to a lack of sleep before my flights from Tulsa to Austin via Dallas this morning (and as I get older, I have a harder time sleeping before a flight, for some reason...). But then again, a search of our forum would have yielded a ton of references to this scenario (and how it was addressed in my case, and under what circumstances).

So in any case, for the purpose of this thread I'll add that coupled with this smoky condition on startup, I had the dreaded tick from the driver's side head and that was what bothered me mostly. And what freaks me out was that it all came about from a very early point in the car's life, at VERY low mileage. In fact, I had the dealer verify a brand new never-driven except off the truck Mach 1 and it made the same noise!

What really alarms me, though, is that the valve stems did indeed look ugly. No backfiring that I could detect and no other symptoms during driving that I was in a position to detect, but the ticking and the oil smoke at startup.

I am happy they took the approach of replacing the head altogether, as the other proposed solution by Ford was to have the guides replaced and machined by some local pimple-faced kid at minimum wage and reassembled using as many of my old parts as possible. Somehow this didn't quite fit in with my conception of what this car was worth, considering the coin I paid for it, so the dealer happily complied to put pressure on Ford for the new preassembled casting instead.


3)If it's not the guides that are causing the problem, what is wrong with the head that is? A porous casting? A crack?


Don't know. The guides are definitely a 'symptom' but are they alone in taking the blame? Were they simply just weak given a deeper flaw in the head design? After all, the telltale sign something was rotten in Denmark was the signs of extreme overheating in those cylinders once they yanked the head. Perhaps they cut costs on valve guides and other parts to the point where they could no longer mask a deeper engineering problem?

I mean, the difficulty that Ford has had in arriving at a satisfactory solution to this problem is perplexing. We know the driver's side head has issues with coolant flow and heat transportation. Would it really be that hard to come up with a solution to this problem? It certainly isn't the first beefy DOHC head to sit upon the deck of a North American V8. Did the LT5 (the Corvette ZR1's engine) suffer from this kind of coolant stagnation and localized overheating? What about the Northstar? What about all DOHC V6s out there? What about foreign DOHC V8s? Sounds like more than just a slip of the draftsman's pencil that gave us this cross to bear... did Ford really underpay their powertrain engineers such that the good ones left when it came time to design the latest iteration of the DOHC mod motor heads?

Someone please tell me what they changed on the later castings... it's really driving me to collossal heights of curiousity.

[Marauder2005]

"but the ticking and the oil smoke at startup."

TransAM I seem to have the same problems and the car
only has 10,500 miles on it; Bone stock 2003 MM. Did
the ticking almost sound like it was under the exhaust
area where the cats were.......

[TripleTransAm]

Mostly from the wheel well on the driver's side. Under the exhaust area near the cats, I think it was Zack that tracked down some fastener that was vibrating on the transmission tunnel. With the hood open, you should be able to detect that the driver's side head is making more noise than the passenger side head: this is the head problem symptom.


edit: a search on ticking and my username should drum up some good reading for the rest of the week. :P At one point, there will be a thread called "my ticking marauder" or something like that, which illustrates the process I went through when getting Ford to warranty my head (er, the one on the car). Ford wanted to simply replace the head with the same casting, whereas it was clearly noted on TSBs that Cobra engines got the new casting. Cheap bas***ds were trying to pawn off remaining old casting heads on us Marauder owners, and keep the new head casting for the more visible Cobra owners. #$%$#!!

[Mike Poore]

Ford wanted to simply replace the head with the same casting, whereas it was clearly noted on TSBs that Cobra engines got the new casting. Cheap bas***ds were trying to pawn off remaining old casting heads on us Marauder owners, and keep the new head casting for the more visible Cobra owners. #$%$#!!
Steve, are you saying they KNOW/KNEW they were installing defective cylinder heads on these cars from the get-go? That's outrageous! I love to see an internal memo directing that decision. :mad: :mad2:

[snowbird]

Someone please tell me what they changed on the later castings... it's really driving me to collossal heights of curiousity.Hi everybody,
There is a good article on 4Vheads in the december 2004 issue of 5.0Mustang mag. A brief article on each of the six variant of 4V heads that we have seen on the modulars.
About our cars, they say the 2003 last serie were made for Aviator, marauder, cobras and the australian boss 260/290. It is supposed to be the best ...
They did mention though that the first series were having a cooling problem for cylinder 6,7,8. A revision in mid 2003 to the cooling tract is supposed to have cured the problem. That new serie head is recognized by "a blue mark on the driver side head and the 2004 didn't had any change".
Also, for 135$, Apten performance from Concinnati Ohio is offering a reconfiguration lines circuit to help fix that cooling problem.
To summarize thought, i'm not shure your tick tick or blue smoke on startup is related to that. For magazines anyway, it's always sunny. Hope this helps.:coolman:

[TripleTransAm]

Steve, are you saying they KNOW/KNEW they were installing defective cylinder heads on these cars from the get-go? That's outrageous! I love to see an internal memo directing that decision. :mad: :mad2:


Of course, I can't confirm any conspiracy theories like this other than stating exactly what happened. And what happened was the 'TSB' being release for Cobra owners only, regarding the ticking. Looking up the original part number, it looked like we shared everything in that danged head with the Cobra, from casting to valves to camshafts, and probably right down to the "bad" valve guides too. So when my dealer inquired as to getting their little fingers on the new casting for my hurting MM, they said the bulletin did not apply to the Marauder. Now that screams :bs: , and my dealer saw through it enough to escalate this to Detroit, at which point they authorized the new head as a replacement. Problem cured, and it's been one year sans puffing.

It was probably against my best interest to share all that info with you guys back then, it probably caused more grief for them having to include the Marauder in the bulletin as they did after we began to complain more, and it was probably not so great for their PR. I have this sinking feeling that if something major fails on my MM anytime soon, I'll have my warranty denied for some silly reason, even though I would not hesitate to proclaim I'm probably the gentlest on my MM amongst all of us (I pretty much have my young family in the car 99.9% of the time I'm using my MM). But THIS is purely a conspiracy theory and I hope it never comes to this... I really only wanted us to be treated as equal Ford-product owners and not secondary to Mustangs.

[423REED]

I apologize... I was too brief in my quick reply, chalk it up to a lack of sleep before my flights from Tulsa to Austin via Dallas this morning (and as I get older, I have a harder time sleeping before a flight, for some reason...). But then again, a search of our forum would have yielded a ton of references to this scenario (and how it was addressed in my case, and under what circumstances).

So in any case, for the purpose of this thread I'll add that coupled with this smoky condition on startup, I had the dreaded tick from the driver's side head and that was what bothered me mostly. And what freaks me out was that it all came about from a very early point in the car's life, at VERY low mileage. In fact, I had the dealer verify a brand new never-driven except off the truck Mach 1 and it made the same noise!

What really alarms me, though, is that the valve stems did indeed look ugly. No backfiring that I could detect and no other symptoms during driving that I was in a position to detect, but the ticking and the oil smoke at startup.

I am happy they took the approach of replacing the head altogether, as the other proposed solution by Ford was to have the guides replaced and machined by some local pimple-faced kid at minimum wage and reassembled using as many of my old parts as possible. Somehow this didn't quite fit in with my conception of what this car was worth, considering the coin I paid for it, so the dealer happily complied to put pressure on Ford for the new preassembled casting instead.




Don't know. The guides are definitely a 'symptom' but are they alone in taking the blame? Were they simply just weak given a deeper flaw in the head design? After all, the telltale sign something was rotten in Denmark was the signs of extreme overheating in those cylinders once they yanked the head. Perhaps they cut costs on valve guides and other parts to the point where they could no longer mask a deeper engineering problem?

I mean, the difficulty that Ford has had in arriving at a satisfactory solution to this problem is perplexing. We know the driver's side head has issues with coolant flow and heat transportation. Would it really be that hard to come up with a solution to this problem? It certainly isn't the first beefy DOHC head to sit upon the deck of a North American V8. Did the LT5 (the Corvette ZR1's engine) suffer from this kind of coolant stagnation and localized overheating? What about the Northstar? What about all DOHC V6s out there? What about foreign DOHC V8s? Sounds like more than just a slip of the draftsman's pencil that gave us this cross to bear... did Ford really underpay their powertrain engineers such that the good ones left when it came time to design the latest iteration of the DOHC mod motor heads?

Someone please tell me what they changed on the later castings... it's really driving me to collossal heights of curiousity.STEVE,
You're right about all the other DOHC engines on the market. My wife and I also have a 1994 Taurus SHO since it was new. It has the 3.2L 32V DOHC V6 engine and the automatic transaxle. This is the engine that Yamaha built with a combination of FOMOCO and Yamaha built/designed parts. The SHO V6 engine looks fabulous in the engine bay, and it just goes and goes, with no oil leaks, no oil smoke, or problems of any kind. When its idling, its so quiet, that you can hardly hear the engine running. It really is a wonderful engine. My wife's only complaint is that when you do need to replace something on the car, based on standard maintenance, it gets really expensive. Earlier this year I spent $ 3300.00 just to replace maintenance parts, such as 4 struts, strut mounting plates, spark plugs, spark plug cables, front camshaft rubber belt and tensioner, etc.). The dealer labor was also a big part of the bill. I have a friend who is a master mechanic with over 30 years of experience at my local Ford dealer. Dean has done all of my Ford work for the last 20 years, and I may use Dean for my Marauder work, down the line. But, I just like my cars to be well maintained, no matter the cost!

I was once a member of the old SHO Registry club. The members used to write in letters proclaiming their high mileage of 150K to 300K, without any engine problems!

My own personal experience after 3200 miles on my 2004 Marauder is no smoke, or any other problems, and seemingly flawless (so far). My car was built on 04/07/04 (a Wednesday!). Maybe being built so close to the end of the Marauder production run also has made a difference, because you would assume Ford got these issues all fixed by the end of production. Most threads I read on the net are from owners of earlier production Marauders, mostly 2003 models, but also some early 2004's. IMHO it appears that Ford was working out a lot of these problems over the production span of the MM, which was unfair to MM owners.

[rumble]

Has anyone else had to have the "oil smoke on start up"
repaired? I just got back in town after a weeks absence,
fired up the MM and it belched out a humungous cloud of
blue oil smoke from the drivers side exhaust. Then it ran
rough as Hell for a few minutes until it quit smoking. In
researching this thread it appears that the fix is a head replacement.
As I say, any one else been here, done that?

[DVader]

Guys I would not worry too much about the blue smoke on start up. I owned a 1999 Cobra which I purchased new and had up to about 60K miles. The car would do the blue smoke thing every now and then and it never gave me any problems. Dealer said it was normal on this type of engine. Now, my 03 MM does the same EXACT thing. So, I'm not worried about it at all.

Bottom line, it's common with these engines and should not effect anything.

[rumble]

Guys I would not worry too much about the blue smoke on start up. I owned a 1999 Cobra which I purchased new and had up to about 60K miles. The car would do the blue smoke thing every now and then and it never gave me any problems. Dealer said it was normal on this type of engine. Now, my 03 MM does the same EXACT thing. So, I'm not worried about it at all.

Bottom line, it's common with these engines and should not effect anything.

OK, thanks that's good to know. I would have to think it is the valve
guides or seals. Oil lays up in the head and when the car sits for a
somewhat longer period of time it seeps down into the combustion
chamber. In my case I figured the engine miss was the oil on the
spark plug. Once the plug cleaned itself out the engine ran fine.
(I wasn't real nuts about screwing a new head down on my motor anyway.)

Does this vale seal thing make sense?

[SergntMac]

Guys I would not worry too much about the blue smoke on start up. I owned a 1999 Cobra which I purchased new and had up to about 60K miles. The car would do the blue smoke thing every now and then and it never gave me any problems. Dealer said it was normal on this type of engine. Now, my 03 MM does the same EXACT thing. So, I'm not worried about it at all. Bottom line, it's common with these engines and should not effect anything.
I agree.

I just rebuilt my MM engine for performance, it's all posted somewhere here. But, I want to say that before this rebuild, I didn't get any "blue smoke at start up" at all. After the rebuild, I see it every now and then. Not everyday, or, always, mostly after the car has sat quiet for over 24 hours.

The rebuild revealed a PCV problem which I also documented somewhere here, and I have to add that we are still working on solving this problem. A clogged PCV system seems to be one of the possible culprits in this "blue smoke" story, and I'll keep y'all up to date on all I discover at this end.

But until then, it seems inconsequential. Just another PITA on this car, just like lack of low end torque. "It is what it is" and if the Marauder blows blue smoke on start up, it's not a sign of anything more serious, at the present time.

Y'all hang loose, many pros are looking at this, including pro racers Randy Crowley at PER, and Jerry VanDerlinde at Sutton Ford. So, let's all sit back and wait to see what gets learned? Can't hurt anymore than it does already, eh?

[TooManyFords]

Yep what ^ they said. Just remember, if you're not burning a little oil, you're burning something else!


john

[ctrcbob]

No problems (so far) with my 03 MM, but all this talk about casting problems with various Ford engines using the 4 valve heads, reminds me of the following.

My wife and I tend to "like" Continentals. We had two 98's (260HP) before we purchased our present 02 (275HP) which is the last year made. Although the 02 drove great, we noticed that when at a stoplight/stopsign, in gear, and when we just let off the brake, the engine had a "shake". Would not happen when foot on brake, or when I would step on gas, only when at a stop, foot off brake, and car just slightly rolling. Took it to my dealer and asked them to check it out. They first thought it might be a bad plug but when they did a compression test, they found that one cylinder was losing pressure. OK, they then thought it was a bad valve, so they ordered new valves for that cylinder, pulled the head (have to drop the engine to do all this) replaced the valves (but then they did the smart thing) then did another compression test with the engine still out of the car. Still lost compression. This is when they figured it was a bad casting (porous head) on that head, so they ordered a new head. Don't know if head came with valves or not. When tested again, the compression was good.

I was worried that the technician would forget to plug in an important connection when he put engine back into car, but he knew what he was doing. This was a technician with many years experiance. He did not forget anything. Started car up, and it has run great ever since.

Before I forget, don't think that these Front Drive Continentals are slugs, (like the Town Car), because they're not. Not as fast as the MM, but when you step on it, they move.

[drobin]

Hi everybody,
There is a good article on 4Vheads in the december 2004 issue of 5.0Mustang mag. A brief article on each of the six variant of 4V heads that we have seen on the modulars.
About our cars, they say the 2003 last serie were made for Aviator, marauder, cobras and the australian boss 260/290. It is supposed to be the best ...
They did mention though that the first series were having a cooling problem for cylinder 6,7,8. A revision in mid 2003 to the cooling tract is supposed to have cured the problem. That new serie head is recognized by "a blue mark on the driver side head and the 2004 didn't had any change".
Also, for 135$, Apten performance from Concinnati Ohio is offering a reconfiguration lines circuit to help fix that cooling problem.
To summarize thought, i'm not shure your tick tick or blue smoke on startup is related to that. For magazines anyway, it's always sunny. Hope this helps.:coolman:


Checked my 2003 A, birthdate 6/02 and noticed I have the blue dot you are referring to. Looks like I've got the updated version as you mentioned and I have no blue smoke or ticking sound at 18K miles...I'm Lucky.....

drobin
"Donald"

[CRUZTAKER]

I tick....always have....:(

[Marauder2005]

I tick....always have....:(
Taker do you notice it when you drive under a bridge or close to

parked cars... It drives me nuts!!!!!! Sounds like its coming from under

the car :mad2:

[Tom Kuznicki]

You may have read my posts on the smoking problem with our 03 Marauder a few weeks back or not. I took mine in to the dealer with 30000 miles on it and after them checking it and having the field rep make a determination, I was told that the acceptable loss of oil in our cars is----are you ready---- 1.5 quarts per 1000 miles. They put my car into an oil consumption test, mind you, it's still under warranty, they changed the oil, and then marked the dipstick after it was full. The only problem with that was when I got the car home and checked for the mark on the dipstick, the oil was over a half inch above the mark. I had a feeling that tricks might be played, oh, by the way, they charged me 36.00 for removing my fresh change of 6 quarts of Mobil 1 and putting the Motorcraft oil into it. They also charged me for some type of lube. After about 250 miles, when I started the car up, it had a very nasty acid type of smell coming out of the T-pipes, this lasted for about a day and went away. The smoke is still there as this test is supposed to be in effect for 3000 miles. Coincidentally, by the time I get 3000 miles on the car, my warranty will be up, or so they think. good luck with yours because I don't Ford is going to make good on these cars unless everyone who has had this problem, AND IT IS A PROBLEM contacts Ford and demands satisfaction.

[Merc-O-matic]

It's the nature of the 4.6L 32 valve engine to sometime
blow blue smoke after sitting for sometime.....
If my car sits for 2-3 weeks I will sometimes get the blue
"smoke" on start up, if I drive it daily the smoke goes away.
Our engine is basically the same engine as found in the Mustang Mach 1,
if you go to their web site, you will see they have the SAME
PROBLEM and concerns we do. It's the nature of the "beast".....
One solution that was noted on the Mach 1 web site, was
to let the engine idle for 1-2 minutes before shutting down.
Works for me. Drive it and enjoy!

Gotta Love It! :bandit: