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My daughter has an 01' Mustang 3.8, since new it pings under a mild to moderate load. It never throws codes, the Ford dealership retarded the timing and now it gets worse mileage and it still PINGS!. I have thrown parts at it for years now and still cannot figure out what is up. After looking through the forum I have seen a few posts on a PCV problem, would this explain the additional oil use problem. It has used oil since the day we bought it new. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Last edited by Firefighter285; 10-14-2009 at 05:40 PM.
A PCV dedlete is pretty easy to do, unfortunately, when you run the a/c on vent, you get the faint smell of oil. Run some seafoam through it and I recommend some NGK TR5 plugs gapped at .35. You're in TX, so it could be an issue with the 10% ethanol mix, and if that's the case, then also try running the middle grade fuel. It's also best to avoid the cheapo gas stations. I stick with the big brands, Shell, BP, Valero, Texaco. The cheaper gas tends to use a lot of bad additives to raise the octane rating that can actually damage your valves and injectors.
I've seen a lot of people that just switch to better quality fuel and see a difference, without even going up an octane rating.
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+1 have you tried a different gas octane like 89 to see if that fixes the ping? 99 and 00 V6 mustangs did have issues with excess crankcase gases with oil getting sucked into the intake and mucking things up but that would take time to build up. 1 or 2 thousand miles to really be noticiable. 01 and up I believe fixed that problem.
Cars that have this issue will have dirtier (carbon build up) plugs on the 1 and 4 pistons if I recall correctly because those are the shortest runners on the intake.
You should really look at all the plugs to see how they look. Their color and wear pattern will tell you a lot about what's going on with your fuel and timing.
I tried the higher octane and no luck. When they retarded the timing they told me "DO NOT USE" higher octane, so I have been on 87(Shell or Exxon)ever since. Did not make much sense to me. Now that I look back each time I decarboned it would take 3-4K before it would begin to ping again. So perhaps I need to fix the PCV system, decarbon again and change the plugs.
Pinging in the engine is caused by the fuel exploding, rather than burning. This can be caused by bad gasoline, too much oxygen, a superheated cylinder, or the spark plug igniting before TDC. Your bad fuel mileage is due to the combustion happening before they piston makes a full rotation, forcing the piston through a VERY high pressure top cycle. Your ECU is trying to compensate for this by adding more fuel/air to each cylinder, thus your poor fuel economy. This is a VERY serious problem you should have checked before you crack a piston, head gasket or engine block. Dont take sh*t from mechanics who say they cant figure this out!
Get your fuel lines/injectors checked, it sounds like you have too rich a fuel/air mix, or just bad gasoline. You have two cheap options. Run the engine dry (or very low fuel), then take it to a name brand gas station (Hess, exxon ect...) and fill it up there, if the problem goes away it is just bad gas. Or you can try using a fuel additive, maby try cleaning your fuel injectors, although I doubt this is the problem.
More expensive options... If you can hear the pinging at a rate that is 1/6 the engine's RPM (2 times per second for an RPM of 720) then it is just one cylinder that is faulty. If it is 2/6 the engine's RPM then 2 cylinders ect...
The only fix for this is to have a complete engine overhaul and replace the faulty piston, it should be more blackened/worn than the others (prety obvious). Or you can just sell the car on Ebay and take what you can. In closing, this is a very bad problem you should not ignore. Cracked pistons are very expensive to replace...
If you can hear the pinging at a rate that is 1/6 the engine's RPM (2 times per second for an RPM of 720) then it is just one cylinder that is faulty. If it is 2/6 the engine's RPM then 2 cylinders ect...
My numbers are incorrect here, the piston moves 1 full cycle without ignition. So that would be more like 2/12 the engine RPM. In any case if your pinging is evenly spaced you could have either one cylinder that is faulty (very likley), or two cylinders that ignite in tandem or are evenly spaced (1,2,3,4,5,6). If the pinging is offset (1,2,3,4,5,6) you have two bad cylinders.
Changing the spark plugs might fix it aswell, could be a faulty spark plug but probably a bad engine ...
If I remember my Physics correctly, is'nt compressed gas more volatile than uncompressed? If you have a crankshaft with an offset pivot point (where the piston connects to the crankshaft) it could cause abnormal compression in one cylinder leading to a more explosive mix.
Last edited by Mirage; 10-16-2009 at 12:17 PM.
Reason: Additional Info
well he said ford retarded his timing, so i dont think hes having too much of a problem with the ignition before tdc. i would probably agree with fixing the pcv system, i think i saw somewhere on here a while back of some people putting a catch can in the pcv line, i think it worked for them
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3.8 pinging under light load
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