Lincoln MKX 3.7 Liter AWKWARD FAILURE What Happened? @I_Do_Cars

Indexado: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Welcome back to the channel, everybody.

[00:00:02]This is the 3.7 you saw on the short.

[00:00:04]It's got 110,000 mi on it. Came out of a 2016 Lincoln MKX.

[00:00:09]And we're going to tear this thing down and we're going to talk about a failure that it had.

[00:00:13]>> [music] [music] >> Okay, so it came out of the Lincoln. If you didn't see the short with the Lincoln in it, I'll leave it connected to this video so you can go see it. This came in for a timing job.

[00:00:31]And when Chris, when Chris was working here, pulled the oil filter, it had metal in the oil filter. Pulled the VVT solenoids, there was metal all over the screens, and I will leave a link to Ray's video. I think he did a video on that.

[00:00:45]To where they pulled them out and you could see it.

[00:00:47]So, but it wasn't making any noise.

[00:00:50]That's That was the weird thing. So, we're going to tear this thing apart and see where the metal came from. First thing we're going to do, we're going to take off that valve cover right there, and you can see it's already unbolted.

[00:01:02]From where they took it out of the car, they took the intake manifold off of it.

[00:01:06]So, we're just going to pull up on the valve cover.

[00:01:12]There's the valve cover.

[00:01:14]Here's the inside. It doesn't look so bad.

[00:01:21]Doesn't look so bad in there at all.

[00:01:24]Let's take a look with the light.

[00:01:34]Hmm.

[00:01:35]I see some some signs of deposit. See it up there in the corner?

[00:01:41]Some.

[00:01:43]That schmoo may be from when the valve cover was off of it before.

[00:01:51]The camshafts look okay.

[00:01:54]All right. A little bit of a backstory, they were using AMSOIL but they were using the OE version of AMSOIL and they went like 30,000 mi and you don't go 30,000 mi on OE. You don't even go 30,000 mi on Signature Series.

[00:02:09]I wouldn't even go 25,000 on it like it says. That's just me though. But, let's get the other side off.

[00:02:16]Oh, remember this is a front-wheel drive vehicle, so if it was in the vehicle, this would be the driver side.

[00:02:22]So, not so bad in there either. There's a little bit of wear looks like right there. We'll take a look down in here as well.

[00:02:31]Actually, it doesn't look so bad so far.

[00:02:36]Get the light.

[00:02:47]Yeah, you can right there you can see some deposits down inside there.

[00:02:51]Back there in the back.

[00:02:56]Not not too too bad. Maybe a little bit of schmoo right there.

[00:03:02]Back there where the head bolts are.

[00:03:06]Back there in that corner you can see it and then right here you can see it.

[00:03:12]Let's pull the spark plugs out.

[00:03:36]Pull spark plugs out the other side.

[00:03:50]It's weird that this car wasn't making any noise when it came in. It wasn't running rough, didn't have a check engine light on.

[00:03:58]They was They were just going to do their maintenance.

[00:04:02]I did notice something about these spark plugs.

[00:04:07]Oh, they are NGK's. That's fine.

[00:04:09]As long as they're not Autolites.

[00:04:12]Autolites are no-no.

[00:04:15]Next thing, timing cover.

[00:04:18]Wow, that's tight.

[00:04:21]Let me go get a hand ratchet.

[00:04:31]Where's the hand ratchet?

[00:04:36]Go pro stop.

[00:04:39]Oh my.

[00:04:43]Ah.

[00:04:47]I just broke a socket.

[00:04:50]I did.

[00:04:52]I broke a socket.

[00:04:56]Nice.

[00:04:58]All right, I got the big boy.

[00:05:05]Or not.

[00:05:06]Holy crap.

[00:05:24]That's warm.

[00:05:25]Red Loctite.

[00:05:30]That That was warm.

[00:05:32]Very warm.

[00:05:38]Grab the 10s.

[00:05:41]That's not a 10. Those aren't 10s.

[00:05:47]Silly me.

[00:05:50]Those are 13's.

[00:05:52]And a bunch of them.

[00:06:12]Make good bolts.

[00:06:19]Make good bolts.

[00:06:21]Duh, they are bolts.

[00:06:23]Spare bolts.

[00:06:34]That's a big one.

[00:06:39]Get the big Get the big guy for that one, too.

[00:07:07]That one wasn't as tight.

[00:07:09]And there's another one.

[00:07:15]That one wasn't as tight.

[00:07:18]So, I still got a 8 mil here, and then I got to get this out so I can get that one.

[00:07:35]Really?

[00:07:37]>> [snorts] >> Now I can get that one.

[00:08:10]Which was a 13.

[00:08:20]And that's all the front cover bolts. No need to pry bar.

[00:08:29]Now, there is a couple places to pry.

[00:08:32]Like right here. [snorts] And on this other side.

[00:08:39]They give you a spot.

[00:08:48]Here we go.

[00:08:55]>> [snorts] >> And there's the timing system.

[00:09:02]Here's the cover.

[00:09:04]It's very clean.

[00:09:06]They went 30,000 mi.

[00:09:08]It's It's It's clean.

[00:09:13]I don't know if that's accurate if they went 30,000 mi or not.

[00:09:16]I really don't know if that's accurate or not.

[00:09:22]Now, we're going to get the eight.

[00:09:24]Pull the tensioner off. We're going to pull the timing system apart.

[00:09:27]What did I do with my impact gun?

[00:09:42]>> Got some tension.

[00:09:54]Got a lot of tension on it, actually.

[00:10:01]Oh, go away, leaf.

[00:10:20]Doesn't look like a lot of wear. I don't see any metal in it.

[00:10:26]We'll look at that again in a minute.

[00:10:43]Same thing with this one. I don't see any metal inside of it.

[00:10:59]I'm going to have to pull these off in one shot together.

[00:11:05]Yep.

[00:11:09]It's a nice chain, though.

[00:11:13]We're going to get these bolts loose.

[00:11:14]Pull the phasers off.

[00:11:17]All right. After having to hold a wrench on there and my lovely associate over there who's in the corner working on some suspension stuff.

[00:11:27]We broke it loose.

[00:11:28]We broke it.

[00:11:30]Thank you.

[00:11:33]Those were tight. Those were tighter than the 37 or 35. Excuse me, this is a 37.

[00:11:51]Come off.

[00:12:00]Phaser.

[00:12:02]Phasers.

[00:12:15]Stupid tensioner.

[00:12:38]Phaser. Phaser.

[00:12:40]Chain.

[00:12:43]That's a long chain, too.

[00:12:45]Hey John, you want to wear this around your neck and bling bling it?

[00:12:49]I mean Yeah.

[00:12:52]Yeah? Bedazzle it, first. Bedazzle it?

[00:13:09]Hey, do you got a 19 over there?

[00:13:12]I do not have a 19.

[00:13:16]I don't see any wear on that.

[00:13:24]I'm I'm going to leave the tensioners in there. Screw it.

[00:13:27]All right.

[00:13:28]Now, let's remove the camshafts.

[00:13:32]I'm just going to zip them out.

[00:13:36]Take off this oil crossover tube.

[00:14:09]How about it, bros?

[00:14:22]Ooh, I dropped one.

[00:14:32]That's not too bad.

[00:14:39]That's not too bad, either.

[00:14:43]It looks normal.

[00:14:49]There's a little bit of wear right there.

[00:14:57]>> [snorts] >> A slight little bit there.

[00:15:02]A little bit on that edge. I don't think that's where our metal came from.

[00:15:08]Nah.

[00:15:13]Definitely not where the metal came from.

[00:15:16]But, some wear on the end of that camshaft right there.

[00:15:29]>> See it right there?

[00:15:39]Not not horrible.

[00:15:43]How's this one look?

[00:15:48]It doesn't have the wear like this one does.

[00:15:55]There's a line right there in the middle of that one.

[00:15:59]Other than that, it's fine.

[00:16:02]Let's move it over to the other side.

[00:16:13]Oil crossover.

[00:16:36]Come out, bolt.

[00:17:02]I'm going to socket back.

[00:17:17]That one It's got a little bit of wear on it.

[00:17:29]Um slight little bit on that one.

[00:17:39]Mhm.

[00:17:41]That looks normal. A little bit of wear normal for camshaft with 100 and something thousand miles on it.

[00:17:53]So I wonder if this can Oh.

[00:18:01]Oh.

[00:18:03]Oh.

[00:18:05]Oh.

[00:18:11]Ooh. Ooh.

[00:18:13]See that?

[00:18:18]Oh.

[00:18:21]Oh.

[00:18:22]I see a problem.

[00:18:24]What? I see a problem.

[00:18:27]That's got some wear.

[00:18:35]That one's not so bad.

[00:18:42]Um slight little bit of wear on that one.

[00:18:48]Awkward.

[00:18:50]Let's pull this camshaft.

[00:18:55]That one's got the line on it, too.

[00:19:02]That one's got a line in the middle of it.

[00:19:06]I can't feel it with my fingers, but I feel it through the glove. Here you go, John.

[00:19:11]What?

[00:19:12]Problem.

[00:19:14]Find it? I found a problem.

[00:19:16]Look at the end of the camshaft.

[00:19:19]Ooh.

[00:19:26]That's not supposed to be that way.

[00:19:32]Mhm. It's pretty grooved. That's bad.

[00:19:37]And that's that's bad.

[00:19:41]So, I think that I'm surprised it wasn't making any noise. Well, I mean, it's on the cam. It's probably on its way to go.

[00:19:46]It is probably, yeah.

[00:19:50]So, yeah.

[00:19:52]There's a problem right there.

[00:19:55]That is not supposed to be grooved.

[00:19:57]That is supposed to look like this one.

[00:20:06]That's bad.

[00:20:07]That's really bad.

[00:20:11]So, now I'm going to pull these sensors out so I can get to these head bolts. This cam sensor has actually got metal on it.

[00:20:22]See that?

[00:20:24]You just wipe it away.

[00:20:25]This one's got it, too.

[00:20:29]Let's see.

[00:20:35]Yep. That's metal.

[00:20:37]It just wipes away.

[00:20:39]It's like anti-seize.

[00:20:41]Gross.

[00:20:43]I'm just going to zip them out with the gun.

[00:20:47]Don't really care.

[00:21:02]I almost hit you.

[00:21:12]>> That one's tight.

[00:21:21]There we go.

[00:21:23]Yes, if I was actually repairing this vehicle, no, I would not take the head bolts out like that.

[00:21:30]And we got coolant leaking.

[00:21:32]Get some pig mat. And I can't do pig mat cuz we're out.

[00:21:43]So, I have a drain bucket underneath it cuz a lot of you guys get mad when there's stuff on the floor and I understand that. I do. I really do.

[00:21:52]It sucks having to work around all that.

[00:21:58]Come on.

[00:22:07]>> [snorts] >> Let's see what's behind head number one.

[00:22:17]Oh, wait.

[00:22:19]I got another bolt.

[00:22:21]Silly me.

[00:22:24]And I need an extension.

[00:22:27]Which I have right here.

[00:22:53]Okay.

[00:22:55]Now let's see what's behind here.

[00:23:00]Make sure I got all of them. Yeah.

[00:23:02]Let me get my together, watch.

[00:23:08]Ooh.

[00:23:12]GoPro. Head gaskets.

[00:23:22]Doesn't look breached anywhere.

[00:23:26]Nope, not at all.

[00:23:30]And I know we don't have a spun rod. We shouldn't anyway.

[00:23:36]But we can do the signs like Eric does.

[00:23:41]Think we're good.

[00:23:44]Let's move it over to the other side or I can show you guys down inside there first.

[00:23:49]And then we'll move over to the other side.

[00:23:54]So, remember I told you it was sitting outside for a little while.

[00:23:57]So, don't mind the rust.

[00:24:05]It's not not too bad. Let's pull this other side off of here.

[00:24:19]This time I'll start in the middle.

[00:24:50]And that's all those head bolts.

[00:25:09]>> And up we go.

[00:25:13]Gross.

[00:25:26]Head gasket.

[00:25:40]Take a look at the cylinders.

[00:25:44]Some That's got to be from sitting outside.

[00:25:48]Definitely from sitting outside.

[00:25:51]Definitely from sitting outside.

[00:25:53]And it smells horrible.

[00:25:55]So, are we going to do the test?

[00:25:59]See if there's a spun bearing, which I know there's not, probably.

[00:26:04]I know there's not, probably a spun bearing.

[00:26:07]Say what? That doesn't make any sense. I know there's not, probably.

[00:26:11]You know there's not, probably?

[00:26:16]How does that work? Think we're good. I don't know how that works.

[00:26:20]You said it, not me.

[00:26:24]All right, let's pull the water pump off.

[00:26:26]This is a front-wheel drive.

[00:26:28]So, the water pump is internal.

[00:26:32]If it is a rear-wheel drive, it is not internal.

[00:26:49]I wonder if I I throw this in.

[00:26:54]Okay, I'm not missing any bolts. What's going on? Stupid water pumps.

[00:27:02]Boop boop boop.

[00:27:05]A screwdriver, this will work.

[00:27:08]It'll work. It'll work.

[00:27:15]Got a good seal.

[00:27:23]Cuz it has a dowel pin.

[00:27:28]Dowel pin right there.

[00:27:32]Doesn't feel chunky.

[00:27:37]Actually feels fine.

[00:27:43]Here, Eric.

[00:27:51]Well, I listened to all the comments and I think I've had a change of heart.

[00:27:54]I know it's right on the cusp, so if there's if there was any more damage to this tractor, I would literally have to part it out and scrap it.

[00:28:03]Wait.

[00:28:04]What happened to the driver side window?

[00:28:10]Anthony! All right, time to turn it around.

[00:28:24]Why did you steal my drill bit?

[00:28:27]Cuz you weren't using it.

[00:28:33]Actually I was.

[00:28:34]No, you weren't.

[00:28:41]Nasty.

[00:29:03]>> I'm trying not to get it all over the floor.

[00:29:19]Which so far I'm doing pretty good at not getting it all over the floor.

[00:29:29]All right. Now we're upside down.

[00:29:37]Let's pull off the oil filter housing.

[00:29:50]Is that it?

[00:29:54]Feels like there's another one.

[00:29:58]No, that's it.

[00:30:00]Ha.

[00:30:05]Don't worry, we'll look at the cylinder heads here in a little bit. Let's pop off the oil pan.

[00:30:12]The oil pan, I'm going to need that eight here in a minute.

[00:30:20]I think these are Yeah.

[00:30:24]I'm going to need that eight cuz there's two eights back here in the corner.

[00:30:29]There's two eights back here in this corner.

[00:31:05]>> Do it.

[00:31:07]Do it. Lots of bolts.

[00:31:10]There's this bolt.

[00:31:24]This bolt two eights.

[00:31:51]Well, let's see if we can pry it off.

[00:31:58]Found a good spot to pry it right there in the corner.

[00:32:02]Now we're getting somewhere.

[00:32:13]And pop that plate off the back.

[00:32:17]Which is the rear seal cover. I already took the bolts out of it earlier.

[00:32:26]There we go.

[00:32:30]It's just sealed on there.

[00:32:39]Yeah. want to see it for me?

[00:32:45]Um, actually doesn't look bad.

[00:32:59]Let's take a look.

[00:33:07]There's a little bit of stuff in there.

[00:33:09]Some chunks right there.

[00:33:15]Other than that, not too bad.

[00:33:22]The pickup screen actually looks like it has a little bit of metal flakes in it.

[00:33:28]So, pull the oil pump off.

[00:33:35]One, two, three.

[00:33:42]Uh, Chris put the bolt back in here.

[00:33:47]18 mm bolt.

[00:33:51]Pull that out of there.

[00:33:53]Get the oil pump gear off.

[00:33:57]Oil pump gear.

[00:33:59]Pull oil pump off.

[00:34:03]And we may take this apart here in a little bit.

[00:34:06]We may not.

[00:34:09]Really depends.

[00:34:14]Uh, let's pull this plate off.

[00:34:42]>> The windage tray.

[00:35:06]The windage tray.

[00:35:08]Nothing major going on here.

[00:35:14]Let's look at the rotating assembly.

[00:35:25]It actually looks pretty clean in here.

[00:35:30]So, I'm just thinking that camshaft just wiped everything out.

[00:35:35]Or not everything, but the camshaft got wiped out.

[00:35:39]All right.

[00:35:40]Let's knock these pistons out of here.

[00:35:43]All right. I'm going to get to the these two right here.

[00:35:54]Oh.

[00:35:55]Come here, bearing.

[00:36:05]Mhm.

[00:36:07]Little bit. Very, very little.

[00:36:21]All right. Next.

[00:36:32]>> Come here, bearing.

[00:36:46]Very, very little.

[00:36:55]Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

[00:37:00]And you and you.

[00:37:27]You and you.

[00:37:39]That was nice.

[00:37:47]All right. I had knocked those two pistons out and then I rotated it.

[00:37:51]Last two pistons.

[00:37:56]Caps, I mean.

[00:37:59]Those other two were still in there.

[00:38:23]Second nothing's fun.

[00:38:30]All right.

[00:38:36]Pull the main caps. We'll pull that out.

[00:38:38]Pull the crank out.

[00:39:03]And we'll pull the pistons out last.

[00:39:22]Wrong size.

[00:39:24]13 on the side. Gross.

[00:39:40]That one I loosened.

[00:39:46]And an extension.

[00:40:27]>> Woo.

[00:40:29]See if we can pull these out.

[00:40:46]That doesn't look bad.

[00:40:50]Let me set you right there.

[00:41:05]This one doesn't look bad.

[00:41:18]This one doesn't look bad.

[00:41:48]Man.

[00:42:19]>> I found the problem. What is I'll show you here in just a second as soon as I pull this crankshaft out.

[00:42:25]It's a pretty crankshaft.

[00:42:27]It's pretty stout.

[00:42:30]What was all that metal in there?

[00:42:32]Take Take a guess.

[00:42:45]See a nice gouge in that piston bore right there.

[00:42:51]Oh, he's going to pop it out. The wipe out a can?

[00:42:57]Yep.

[00:43:01]Yeah, that'll do it.

[00:43:03]Yeah.

[00:43:04]How did it do that? Did it shear a pin off? I have no idea.

[00:43:07]Those are oil galleries.

[00:43:10]Mhm.

[00:43:11]Mhm. Never seen a cam do that. Hello, Miss Lauren. Good morning. How are you?

[00:43:15]I'm good.

[00:43:17]The head inside where it sits inside the head is trashed, too.

[00:43:22]Okay, cool.

[00:43:24]And all this is going in the junk pile.

[00:43:27]Garbage.

[00:43:28]You know, back in the day people used to save the pistons and use them for ashtrays. Oh, yeah.

[00:43:33]>> [laughter] >> You know what? Is this an an Is this someone's engine? It's the old engine. I bought it.

[00:43:40]I bought it so we could take it apart and throw it away.

[00:43:42]So, you used the parts for it? No, we just wanted to see what's inside.

[00:43:49]Pistons.

[00:43:50]Mhm.

[00:43:51]Mhm.

[00:43:53]Hi. Hello. Mhm.

[00:43:54]Mhm. Miss Lauren made her appearance.

[00:43:57]Hello.

[00:43:58]I did not know I would Well, now you know.

[00:44:02]>> to put my face on.

[00:44:04]I always got to put my face on.

[00:44:06]Oh, that's a crust-o-matic looking piston.

[00:44:08]>> Yeah, it was it was sitting outside, remember?

[00:44:10]Uh I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. How bad was it in there? Was it full of water? Um this side had a couple uh some water inside the cylinder.

[00:44:20]Other than that, no.

[00:44:22]It wasn't bad.

[00:44:24]Can you Can you sell it? I mean, can you like take the parts and then sell it?

[00:44:32]I mean, that's a lot of metal. Yeah.

[00:44:35]Scrap metal? It's scrap. It's not It's not really uh No. You can't really do anything with it. There's no There's no use here.

[00:44:51]We rebuild it, I guess. It's It's a buildable core.

[00:44:54]>> Yeah, the block's fine.

[00:44:56]Yeah, this is a rebuildable core, for And uh That's trash.

[00:45:08]The adapters, some gears, some torn up timing belt. I'm sure we can make something out of it. You got a welder?

[00:45:13]>> We can make a mailbox. Yeah.

[00:45:16]Oh, dropped my bearing. Make a mailbox out of All right.

[00:45:23]Looking at the block.

[00:45:25]Really nothing wrong with the block.

[00:45:28]It actually looks really good inside here.

[00:45:31]This can be cleaned up. The block will be fine. Ray had a good point.

[00:45:36]Bearing looks fine.

[00:45:39]This is This is salvageable. We can rebuild this. Now, let's go over here and take a look.

[00:45:48]All right, so we got the parts laid out, the important parts anyway.

[00:45:53]That was where the metal came from.

[00:45:59]I don't know how it does that. I've never seen it do that before.

[00:46:02]I mean, I've seen camshafts like the lobes wipe out or Or the not the front journal.

[00:46:09]>> Not the front journal.

[00:46:10]It must have gotten something in there.

[00:46:12]It there's The it's more up in the little oil galley, right?

[00:46:17]>> galley, yep. So, something was sending metal in there and then it was carving away more of that oil groove. Yeah. And this is >> No, no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute.

[00:46:24]What Is that groove supposed to be there? No.

[00:46:30]Okay.

[00:46:33]So, it's got holes in here, so oil came the phaser failed and sent oil through those little holes which were supposed to oil this galley right here.

[00:46:45]But it filled that camshaft full of steel from the phaser. Then that steel ended up beside of those holes in the cam riding around in that groove, just chewing the daylights out of it. And you know, it wasn't making any noise, remember? No. No, it wasn't making noise. But the head's fine, I mean It had It had VVT problems cuz it >> It did. It had timing codes.

[00:47:05]>> It had timing codes, yeah.

[00:47:06]>> Yeah, and that's why we were going to do the timing chain and the water pump and everything. And that's why we got timing codes because of that right there.

[00:47:14]But crankshaft looks good.

[00:47:17]Everything looks good, I mean.

[00:47:21]There's on the pistons pistons don't look bad. Normal wear for pistons.

[00:47:29]I mean, they don't look bad at all.

[00:47:31]That's probably from me picking it up.

[00:47:36]Normal wear?

[00:47:41]But that's that was the problem.

[00:47:44]All right, so there's the 3.7 L teardown, 110,000 mi on it. Apparently, we had a failed VCT phaser.

[00:47:51]And it just completely wiped out the cam and sent metal through the entire system. The oil filter was full of metal.

[00:47:58]The uh the oil filter was full of metal.

[00:48:02]And when they pulled the VCT solenoids out, they had metal all inside of them, too.

[00:48:08]And that's why it had metal inside of it.

[00:48:11]Because it failed and had failed camshaft. But, that's why it was here for some timing codes and then ended up getting a new engine. And now Ray owns that car. And Ray is actually selling that car. It has a new engine in it with 100,000 mi, so 10,000 mi less. New water pump, new timing set, everything's good to go. So, that being said, I love you guys. I'll see you on the next one.