Bad Ticking and acceleration problem-Please help!
 

I could use some help please. I have an 06 F150 Screw FX4 with the 5.4. Sorry if this is an existing topic. Most of the topics I read about didn't have the exact same things happening that I am experiencing. I recently went on a trip from Northern Utah to Southern California and back. Since going on the trip a couple things have come up when we reached California. The first thing is I am now getting a very loud ticking sound. It sounds like it is coming from under the truck and is loudest around the front drivers door and the front passengers door. If you open the hood and you are standing right over the engine, you can barely hear the ticking sound. This happens on idle, accelerating, pretty much anytime on a cold and warm engine. I also have noticed since the ticking sound has came on there is an acceleration problem when under moderate acceleration. When you first press on the throttle the response is normal and if you give a moderate amount of throttle, it lags and struggles to pick up speed. If you give it a lot of throttle it will then pick up speed fairly normally.

Another thing to note is that on the way down I averaged about 14.5 MPG on a couple tanks of gas purchased in Utah. Then on the next 3 tanks buying gas in Nevada and California I averaged 10.5 MPG and when I noticed the above mentioned problems (ticking & acceleration) problems. Then the last tank of gas I filled up in Utah again, with I am now getting back around 14.5 MPG and have a little more power (ticking is still the same). So on the drive when I had the cruise control set at 80 MPH on the way down to Cali the truck did great handling hills with minimal downshifts. With the gas from Nevada and California, when on the freeway it would more than struggle with tiny hills and downshift like crazy and even struggle to get up to the cruise speed. With the most recent gas from Utah again, it did so much better handling the hills and acted more normal like the drive down to California. Could I have got a couple tanks of bad gas and could it have caused any of this? Could it be that Nevada and California have a little different fuel mixtures? I do know that I always fill up in Utah with 85 octane and it has always ran great. Nevada and California only have 87 as the lowest and that is when I have noticed all the problems as well. When I got back to 85 octane from Utah the performance has increased again.

Sorry its so long. Hopefully it makes sense. Just want to put as much info as I can think of.

Thank you in advance for any help or feedback.
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