I've been running the hell out of my 4.7 for the last 20k miles, the truck has 113k miles now. I do a little bit of towing, offroading, drifting, and just plain screwing around. It see's a lot of time over 4k rpm, I've been impressed so far, it was only a matter of time before I started having issues.

For a while I had the regular 4.7 tick on a cold engine but it always went away once the truck warmed up, recently it started ticking all the time. Just yesrerday I was sitting idling with a warm engine and it was ticking away like normal, then suddenly it got louder. It wasnt terrible so I continued driving and it went back to the normal tick.

I'm thinking the noise is coming from slack in the timing chain. I cant do anything for a few months so I'm gonna be easy on it until then. When I do tear into it should I just replace tensioners and guides or spend the extra money and replace lifters chains and gears too?

 

Has anybody torn into one of these or am I the only guy trying to keep my 4.7 alive?

 

I've got a 4.7 that ticks... sort of a knocking tick. It's either the timing chain slapping something or a wrist pin. Either way, I don't care enough to touch it. Like you I've revved it for extended periods of time towing up a grade around 4,000 RPM and it's not had any issues.

The SOHC engines can rev higher, safer, than the OHV engines can.

 

Have you checked your exhaust manifold for leaks?

Next two things to have done are a compression and leak down test.

Those tests will also tell you if you have any internal engine issues.

 

I havent checked that but I will, I'll probably do new sparkplugs again this summer so I'll do a compression test then.

The sound is intermittent, just the other day the engine was still warm when I started it, I let it idle for a few minutes then it started making the sound again. Its really easy to hear in the cab but I can barely hear it outside.

 

My bet is the back one or two bolts on the driver's side of the exhaust manifold are snapped off at the head. Common, VERY common on the 4.7...

 

If thats all thats wrong, do I just need new bolts and a gasket? Assuming I can get the old ones out easy.

Hammer, didnt you do the timing chains on a 4.7 before?

 

They'll come out, there's a set of bolt extractors called "Grabit" that work quite well on these. Ace, Lowes, etc. sells them for like $17 a set of three different sizes.





and yes, as part of an entire rebuild of the 4.7 HO that was in my old Grand Cherokee I replaced the timing set.