2001 4.0 SOHC knock/ping/tick

[Swayman]

First time poster, long time reader....
I have a 2001 4.0 SOHC ranger XLT 2wd, which up until recently ran perfectly fine. I had the timing chain tick between 2500 and 3000 rpms like most people on here have discussed, however i now have a serious knocking sound in the motor, but it has absolutely no power loss (it'll break loose on dry pavement shifting into second, or at a dead stop it will roast the tires with full pedal depression), my question is does anybody know if this problem is directly related to the timing chain (it almost sounds to me like the timing chain is slapping against the cover) we pulled apart the driver side valve cover and found chunks of plastic in the timing chain slot, pulled those out and reassembled, however the noise persists. is it necissary to pull the motor in order to change the tensioners on the front of the motor, or is it possible to dissasemble it in the truck and repair this issue?

im on an extremely limited budget so if anybody knows precisely what i'd need to buy to fix the problem, it'd be fantastic. Somebody posted a youtube clip of their ranger making a similar noise at idle, but mine actually makes it through the entire rpm band (it obviously speeds up at higher rpms), any advice would be fantastic.
thanks!

 

[Fx4wannabe01]

I can't help you much as I've never heard a knock problem on these engines before....only when timing was adjusted too far. Which could mean what you are suspecting: timings too far off thanks to those chains.

Engine needs pulled to take care of the rear chains and tensioners. The front can be done in the truck. The plastic you found sounds about typical of the plastic tensioner gone away.




My truck did the noise since about '05 at 40k and has progressively got worse and worse every year since, til this past summer at 110k, it got pretty damn bad. The cost of fixing the chains and the cost of putting in a low milage replacement engine was about the same. I chose to put in a 1,000 mile '06 engine.

Sorry I can't help you much in the technical department, I can just tell you how I cured it.