You're paranoid, and that's normal. I get parinoid after any time I have a head or even a lower intake off. You care about your truck and take pride in your work. Both good characteristics. ????
Very surprised by fast startup. Fuel, valves, spark, and rings healthy. Good work
I do hear some tick, and it sounds like mine. Like eerily simar. J&c heads?
Either way, get us a warmed up after a 20 min drive at idle. But so far all I hear is a busted fan clutch and a very healthy iac valve ??
2.9 IACs make me laugh. When loud AF, they are healthy. When quiet and normal engine sounding, you're about to lose your iac.
Was, and remains the hardest thing to tune on a 2.9. They're revvy little sh*ts..
I could be wrong. I often am. But so far I hear normal cologne v6.
... Efan>clutch fan on 2.9. If you flush TF out of your block, port open up the coolant port on the back of the lower manifold gasket to allow better coolant flow across the heads and go to a high flow thermostat (listed on build thread) you can dial a 2.9 in with a thermostat with single degree precision. They're water pumps are scary good if coolant passages are squeaky and allowed to flow.
2.9s are very simple. Ford Europe designed a revvy little v6 for middle management types. That car, Sierra, became a symbol of UK and oddly Russian blue collar bootstrap motorsports. The cosworth / Brian hart versions of their heads were designed to run formula.
So we brought them here, ripped their lungs out ,fed it crisco and corn, shoved a cork up its ass and made it pull beds full of shit up hills on arguably the worst auto AND manual transmissions ever made by Ford.
And we wonder why it had ****ing issues.
Ford engineers:
"yeah, just Cortina/Sierra/mondeo world sedan platform v6 and throw it in a hastily slapped together pickup on North America. It'll be fine. What? It doesn't meet their emissions? Ruin it till it does!"
That's ford. That's how ford thinks.
Moving on...
Make it healthy now. Start using a high moly oil. Then, as comfort increases, let it breathe. Port intakes, intake spacers, merkur scorpio twin throttle body swap, HEADERS (Satan made your exhaust manifolds. One of mine broke a manifold eyelet out of one of my old heads), high volume oil pump, do some exhaust cfm math, intake tube mod, etc.
Only way to make one happy driveline wise is 10 inch clutch and a m5od geared for 2.9.
Ask a few guys on here. Clogged catalytic converters, baloney skin stocker tires, and in fwd, mine smoked the **** out of my clutch when I dumped it in reverse to get out of a sand pit.
The 2.9 got pi**ed and the stock newish clutch wS the weak point.
Keep em cool, keep em clean, they stay happy.
Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and Register
for our forum. Even if you don't want to post, you can still 'Like' and react to posts. 
Y'all need to listen to my F250, thing sounds like a diesel at 196k and I still pull full loads with it...
?
