Sometimes the worst damage to a car is invisible to the naked eye. It sometimes takes hours of dismantling to find the disaster. That’s exactly the case with this 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 from a 2019 Ford F-150.
THE I make cars The YouTube channel got this EcoBoost mill as a base return of a sold motor. There is no information on the number of miles covered, but each spark plug has a red dot on the end, indicating that it has not been changed since leaving the factory. So it is likely that this was a low mileage unit when it was removed from its resting place.
Eric, host of the I make cars channel, find some weird stuff inside this engine. It appears that a previous mechanic used channel locks to turn the camshafts, given the damage done to them – strange given that there is a space nearby where someone could do this without damage the metal. Strangely, the timing chain rail has a 2021 date code, meaning it is an aftermarket part. A new timing chain is not something you normally see on a low mileage engine.
The real problem reveals itself shortly after removing the oil pan. Eric finds the crankshaft broken into two pieces, sitting loosely in the block. The damage was enough to destroy the block and one of the pistons.
Eric suspects that there is not a single cause for this catastrophic failure, but rather a handful of small problems that have accumulated. A significant amount of carbon on the piston ring rings could be enough to cause a reduction in engine compression and possibly even a misfire. Additionally, damage to the replaced camshafts and timing components shows previous issues with this power plant. The combination of these issues, plus a faulty crankshaft, could be the reason this engine failed.
Although not very common, crankshaft failures on this engine have occurred before. The video below shows a similar situation with a broken crank in a 2017 F-150.
