Timing chain jump 3.0L 2007 Ranger XLT

[Kalian]

Just recently had a family member have their 3.0L throw the chain i believe at around 80mph down the insterstate. *Oil light came on (assuming for low pressure as motor has oil in it, no power behind the accelerator and motor was shaking violently. Heard knocking after this happened). They coasted to a stop on the side of the interstate but stated they didn't manually shut the engine off and it died on its own before they got stopped. My understanding is that the 3.0L is a non-interference engine, so I'm curious if anyone here has had a similar experience with one and what kind of damage did their engine end up with? Trying to help them decide which way to go with this as far as repair/replace engine.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Just recently had a family member have their 3.0L throw the chain i believe at around 80mph down the insterstate. *Oil light came on (assuming for low pressure as motor has oil in it, no power behind the accelerator and motor was shaking violently. Heard knocking after this happened). They coasted to a stop on the side of the interstate but stated they didn't manually shut the engine off and it died on its own before they got stopped. My understanding is that the 3.0L is a non-interference engine, so I'm curious if anyone here has had a similar experience with one and what kind of damage did their engine end up with? Trying to help them decide which way to go with this as far as repair/replace engine.

Only sure way to tell what happened is to start tearing the engine down. My 92 4.0 lost power and oil pressure suddenly on the highway and died as I was trying to ease it on the shoulder. It would start and run poorly. I happened to have another 4.0 at the time and needed the truck so I swapped it and started tearing the other motor down because I found metal chunks in the intake. Turned out it slagged a piston. Still don’t know exactly how. Everyone said a faulty fuel injector or computer but all of that got put on the replacement engine that ran great.

Well, technically a compression test would have told me I had a dead cylinder but I figured that already. I knew it wasn’t valves when I pulled the covers and saw everything looked fine.

 

[pjtoledo]

unfortunately, the 3.0 has a tendency to strip the cam sync drive gear. when that happens the oil pump stops pumping.

disregard the timing chain and interference, first check for oil pressure while cranking. if it will crank.
pull the cam sync unit to inspect it's drive gear.
the cam sync unit drives the oil pump so when the gear goes so does oil pressure.

 

[Kalian]

Appreciate the replies. Yeah, I'd do some diagnosis myself if I was closer to them but that isn't the case unfortunately. Paid to get it towed to a shop nearby them and going to get with the shop on monday. They did say they cranked it again at some point but it ran extremely rough and only held idle about 7 seconds before dieing but the oil light was still on during that time which I can only assume right now is no oil pressure flagging it. The way you described the slagged piston @lil_Blue_Ford seems similar to how they described their issue to me.

 

[pjtoledo]

with no oil pressure the lifers collapse and don't open valves much. plus if the gear is stripped the timing is way off.