Pinging on hills problem?

[stopcomplaining]

my OHV V6 (100k miles) pings pretty badly when going up steep hills on the highway. Here is what I've tried:

injector cleaner
new plugs and wires
higher octane gas
cleaned MAF
reset computer
changed air filter
changed oil

Problem persists. Compression test shows cylinder 5 is down a tiny bit. I have read a bunch of pinging threads on here, but I was just wondering what the next step would be. Should I try a little bit of water in the intake? Thanks guys.

 

[James909]

I would start by using some seafoam to clear out any carbon buildup. I have also heard the water in the intake trick but have never done it. But seafoam should do the same thing if not do it better. You should also look very closely to make sure that there are no vacuum leaks anywhere. Is the truck using any oil? I struggled with pinging in my '92 OHV forever and pretty recently I finally was able to get it to stop. My pinging was caused by numerous things. My problems were a few vacuum leaks, there was a hole in the intake tube and a vacuum line had also broken clean off. If the truck is burning oil then I would check the lower intake manifold bolts. My truck was starting to use oil quite frequently. So I torqued the lower intake manifold bolts, the middle ones were just finger tight. This took care of the majority of the pinging as well as the oil consumption. Oil was leaking into the cylinders and causing the pinging.

 

[dogfriend]

Seafoam. Follow the directions carefully to avoid the possibility of hydrolocking. There are lots of threads on it. Ford also makes a cleaner to do the same thing. There is a TSB to describe it which I posted a few years ago.

 

[MrShorty]

I don't think it's as much of an issue on your '00 OHV, but the 1st gen OHV's had numerous intake manifold problems, and they were often associated with the #5 cylinder. In most cases, the bolts just came loose, creating a small vacuum leak which leaned out the engine enough to get it to ping. Any oil or coolant loss? On the 1st gen, these are often associated with intake manifold gasket leaks, too.

Just a thought.

 

[unclemeat]

Sometimes you can correct the problem by burning out the carbon, by running high rpms for 5-minutes or so. This is a frequent problem with manual transmissions. Try running the engine in a lower gear and engine rpms above 3500.

 

[stopcomplaining]

I tried the water in the intake and I did get a good show of gunk out of the tail pipe, but the pinging problem is still there. Any other ideas what it could be? I really need to tow this week and I'm not doing that with an engine ping.

 

[ccwms]

???

Just wonderin what is water in the intake trick? what is that suppose to do and how are u suppose to do it??

chris

 

[stopcomplaining]

Just wonderin what is water in the intake trick? what is that suppose to do and how are u suppose to do it??

chris

It involves feeding water a little at a time into the intake manifold to break up carbon buildup. You can read about it here:

http://www.explorerforum.com/Singleton/web/pages/ping.html

 

[wood1]

I tried the water in the intake and I did get a good show of gunk out of the tail pipe, but the pinging problem is still there. Any other ideas what it could be? I really need to tow this week and I'm not doing that with an engine ping.

Did you check the bolts on the lower intake as mentioned? That was my pinging problem...

 

[stopcomplaining]

Did you check the bolts on the lower intake as mentioned? That was my pinging problem...

Where are these bolts? How do I access them?

 

[wood1]

The lower intake manifold it bolted to the top of the heads. I'm not sure if the '00 engines had the same problems with intake monifold gaskets but it's worth a shot.