Every F-150 thread eventually turns into cam phasers. I have a 2017 SuperCrew with the EcoBoost, so I’ve read most of them.
Buying one used is worse. You’re standing next to somebody else’s truck with your phone out, the seller says “oh, that’s been taken care of,” and you’ve got about five minutes to figure out what you’re actually buying. Plenty of sites will sell you a title report. Nobody tells you what that engine is about to cost you.
So I built CurbSpec. Punch in a VIN (or paste the listing) and the mileage, and you get one page: what’s due or overdue on that powertrain, the recalls and campaigns that actually apply to that truck, and the known issues worth asking about. $12.99, no account, no ads. It’s the before-you-buy cousin of wrenchtron.
Wrong on My Own Truck
I paid for a report on my own 2017 to make sure checkout actually worked. It did. Then I read the phaser line.
It basically said “ask whether the repair was done.” That’s the dealer shrug.
Turns out 21N03 wasn’t a recall, and it wasn’t a yes or no. It was a Customer Satisfaction Program that paid out by the miles on the truck when it was fixed.. 100% under 70k, 66% up to 80k, 33% up to 90k, nothing after that. You only got in if the 21B10 PCM reflash happened before February 28, 2022, and the whole thing died January 1, 2023.
A stranger would have paid $12.99 for my shrug. So I fixed it.. the sourced version lives at curbspec.com/f-150.
There’s a Chrome extension too. It puts a button on Cars.com and Autotrader listings so you don’t have to copy a 17-character VIN across ten tabs.
Live: https://curbspec.com
Ask about the phasers.