I wanted to follow up on my original post regarding the "fix" to update everyone.
TL;DR: To do it all over again, I don't think I'd mention the cam phaser TSB when I having the inspection done and just live with the 15 seconds of noise.
So, my local dealer (where I bought the truck) started to perform the work on a Wednesday and after a bit of back and forth needed to keep it until the following Tuesday to get the parts and install everything. I picked it up on Tuesday and drove straight home, less than 5 miles. As an aside, I chatted with the service advisor who said that they've done dozens of the phaser TSB fixes for the Ecoboosts on both Raptors and other platforms.
Honestly, as some have said, the service manager told me that while it's noisy it's not detrimental to get
Regardless, as I'm working from home at this time, I didn't drive the truck further until Saturday (Halloween). I ran a few errands early in the day and all seemed fine until I started noticing some noise that I chalked up to a bit of belt whine, but the truck seemed to run fine. To rationalize the whine, I told myself that perhaps during the work they'd gotten some coolant on the belt, etc. and figured it'd work itself out. I mean it was annoying, but not earth shattering.
Anyway, that evening I was going to take my two little guys trick or treating. We live in an area where the houses are pretty far apart so they like to hop in the bed and we drive from house to house. Well, this is where the problems started. The fans started running CONSTANTLY which went on for a while. While concerning, I told myself it was b/c I was running the heater, etc., but soon after I noticed that the engine temp was increasing and eventually spiked to the point of overheating. After many cycles of shutting it off, restarting, and driving a couple hundred feet (to get closer to home), I opened her up and noticed that the coolant reservoir was COMPLETELY empty. I called my wife to bring me some coolant so I could fill it back up and get home, which she did. Well, when I poured it in it dumped straight onto the ground. Regardless, I did the cool down, start, drive, stop, rinse repeat process 5 or 6 times and got the truck into my driveway where it sat until Monday AM. While I couldn't get a truly clear look, I assumed at that point that a hose clamp had come loose.
On Monday, I called the dealer who had me call Ford roadside to have it towed to the dealership which I did. Once there, well, sure enough they looked at it and found that the clamp had fallen off. They put a new clamp on and said they "cleaned it up in there". I picked it back up Monday night and drove it a bit and all seemed well.
On Wednesday, I was running some errands when the belt whine, etc. came back strong. I was near the dealership and I swung in to have them look at it to which he stated that he thought it was the belts too and confirmed my suspicion that perhaps something had gotten on there during the work. He asked me to bring it by this morning so that they could fix it and so here we are. I'm still waiting to hear from them.
Perhaps it's an overreaction, but part of me did consider asking the sales folks when I go to pick it up what they could do for me on a trade in for a 2020?
I probably won't pull the trigger, but hey, who know.
