I could switch out the FPR, that's easy enough, as I have a few that came off of running cars.
It could simply be my O2 sensors going bad. They look new-ish, but I let the car sit up for a long time before I started driving it. Any number of sensors that were a little dirty when it was parked could be really nasty now. I really need to spend the afternoon with my meter going over every sensor.
Did some work today. I figured out how to rebuild the fast idle valve, and there will be a how to video coming as soon as I can get to the junkyard for cores.
In doing some exploratory work, I pulled the throttle body. The entire inside of the intake is black. The air ports on the throttle body are plugged up. I have a new TB I'm putting in because it has a known good TPS, just to eliminate that and reduce cleaning time since I've been working on it since 9AM again. Lots of problems fixed, but that fuggin' ping is still there.
Well, I think somewhere along the road I sold that spare throttle body. I can't raid my last car for parts because it's gonna be a rallycrosser.
What I hate is that I've been working either on my car or this website at least 10 hours a day 3 times a week for several weeks now. There's going to be a ton of cool stuff coming from this way.
Took the upper intake manifold and the butterflies out. The butterflies were covered in more deposits than the throttle plate. It will all be clean when it goes back together, but it looks like that will be tomorrow.
Don't you love 5 minute projects?
Dude you should put it all together, and seafoam that thing. Sounds like your biggest problem may be carbon build up.
Got the top half of the manifold and the butterflies factory clean. I cleaned the idle air control valve and rebuilt my fast idle valve. My idle is rock solid at 800 RPM now. The ping, however, is worse. This is seeming more and more like a lack of fuel pressure. I have more air going in, now I'm pinging harder.
My other question is whether or not the butterflies being open when they aren't supposed to be cause my issue? Symptoms line up. I ping from 3000 through 5500 RPM, which is when I recall the butterflies are supposed to open and likely get an extra dose of fuel.
The other direction to take this is a worn distributor. I think I'm going to do Snooz's lazyman's rebuild on one and install that. The one on there looks to be OEM at 215,000 miles.
For what it's worth, the FSM states that you need to make sure all sensors and valves be in working order before troubleshooting any further. That's why I spent so long getting everything clean today. I'm going to work through testing sensors and reporting back.
IDK man, I've tuned my MS lean enough to where it would misfire badly, but it would NEVER ping. Unless you have really bad fuel I don't think fueling is the problem. Heavy carbon buildup is a very real possibility because it not only creates hot spots in the cylinders that can pre-ignite the mixture, but it also can take up enough volume to increase the compression ratio which increases the likelihood of pre-ignition and detonation. Seeing how your intake was badly plugged up I would say a Seafoam treatment is in order.
The fact that your distributor is retarded as far as it can go is also highly suspect. Even before Seafoaming I would at least check the timing at idle to make sure it's not completely off in left field. And even without a timing light you can check the cam timing by lining up the flywheel at TDC and looking at the marks on the cam pulley. They should line up with the top surface of the head.
C|
Since I'm trying to learn more about what's causing this ping, I'm not doing any more treatments. I want to figure out what it takes to make these run like this, so we know how to fix it next time.
One thing I'm thinking is that the last time I did a valve adjustment, it might have ended up too tight. I think that correlates with when it started getting more prone to pinging. I think I'm gonna check them tomorrow. Pulling these heads off is pretty easy, so I might give it a new head gasket and check things out.
2nd runner butterflys only open after 5500 rpm as i remember.
1988 Lxi owner since August 1995
336k miles running strong!
Now running E85.
Oldblueaccord <<< MY YOUTUBE PAGE!
Ive heard a very faint sound before that kind of sounded like ping but it was something else because ping usually happens only under a load. I honestly thing it is something else that is hitting the same sound frequency. A valve tappet could do that and not even be out of adjustment, or any one of the accessory pulleys or even alternator.
I don't know how loud your sound is.
I still think what you're doing to find out is productive and beneficial because I could be wrong and nobody can afford to be wrong with preignition issues.
I'd put a good light on those rocker tappets when adjusting and make sure the feeler guage lays flat on the stem and not at an angle. Common mistake if you don't have 45 deg angled feeler guage.
If you pull the head, may as well triple check out those valve seats!
Last edited by 2oodoor; 02-24-2013 at 04:06 AM.
If I pull the head, a freshly built ported head gets installed.
Update for this morning: Been doing some "Italian tune-ups" and the ping has softened a good deal. I did add some Marvel Mystery Oil to the tank (4 ounces to about 10 gallons of premium) and to the crankcase. I've had it work wonders in the crankcase for desludging an engine, but I've never tried it in the tank. I didn't expect it to work, but it may be what's slowly curing my ping. My guess is that it is cleaning out my cylinders, too. I was hoping it wouldn't work, to be honest.
Next thing I work on will be the distributor after I make all of my timing checks. I'll get this thing running right no matter what.
Something is askew here.
Not a whole tooth, but it does look like I'm dealing with quite a bit of stretch here.
Right side looks like its missing a chunk of belt.
1988 Lxi owner since August 1995
336k miles running strong!
Now running E85.
Oldblueaccord <<< MY YOUTUBE PAGE!
Nope, it's the lighting. Camera phone stuff here.
I set the ignition timing to spec and tested the vacuum advance mechanism. Everything checks out and is to spec. Pings worse now than it did before because I've now advanced the timing quite a few degrees. I'm going to look into a timing belt replacement as soon as finances allow it. I still think I'm shooting in the dark there, and I'm going to continue with more testing of sensors as time allows.
Only time I had pinging was after many years of buying suspect gas at a local cheap filling station. Carbon build up in the cylinders and valve deposits had made it to run like crap. I was able to blow it all out with PEA (Redline SI-1) detergent, full bottle in a full tank and Italian tune up driving. (good and hot on the freeway and climbing a long grade in the Sierra's at full throttle) With that treatment it was fixed after one tank of gas, but really needs to get up, go, run hard and hot to burn up the deposits. That was many years ago and not a problem since....
I have since switched to only using top-tier gas and adding maintenance dose of SI-1 to the gas.
It looks like a tooth to me. If you retard it a tooth, it might be enough to allow you to adjust out the rest at the distributor.Originally Posted by Vanilla Sky
Dr_Snooz
"I like to take hammers, and just break stuff, just break stuff." - Beavis
1989 Honda Accord LX-i Coupe, 240k miles, MT swap, rear disc swap
Shop manual downloads available here: CLICK TO VIEW
Well, I'm going to pick up a timing belt anyway. If that one slipped, chances are it will happen again. Gives me a chance to install a front main and cam seal.
I'm not seeing it guys, that looks damn near perfect to me. Replacing the T-belt might be a good idea anyway if it's old, but if it was off a tooth either way it wouldn't even be close to the TDC mark. And seeing that your timing checked out ok with a light, I would go back to looking at carbon buildup. The only other ignition problem you could have is a mechanical problem with the distributor, like if one of the springs broke and the mechanical advance is coming in too early or too much.
C|
Just installed my GE cam gear and verified 100% that my timing belt is now on correct. It was a tooth off. I put the GE gear on because I had it, not for any other reason. It is set at zero. I set the ignition timing again with my timing gun. Lots more power.
Still pings.
It did occur to me today that I haven't even had the cap off of this distributor. That leaves the condition of this distributor a complete mystery. I'm still thinking ignition, but now I'm thinking mechanical advance. I still don't think this engine is carboned up bad enough to make it ping like this.
Now, I did do a full throttle 3rd gear pull to redline today. I don't think it pings or makes any noises other than a little valve noise when I do this. I got no puffs of smoke from the tail pipe when I did it, and I was fully warmed up at the time. If I was going to burn carbon off as smoke, it would have been then. The lack of soot when doing this is why I don't think this is carbon related.
By chance have you checked the oil pressure?
un-motivated!
someone make me an offer i just could not say no to.
3GR
I have not, but it sounds like ping, not a knock.
^^^this is a good idea for anybody with these cars because those oil pumps have that internal rubber seal very much like the oil filter adapter seal, it is round stock rubber like o ring and can get a crack in it. This can randomly and intermittently affect oil pressure and you would never know it without a gauge on it.
Low oil pressure will make all sorts of different noises.
un-motivated!
someone make me an offer i just could not say no to.
3GR
Very true. It doesn't help that our oil lights only light up at like 4 psi. I will check it when it stops raining.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks