Hey guys, I just picked up my car from some warrentee work (what a PITA) and now when I get on it WOT, I hear what I can only discribe as sand bouncing around in my engine. It did this before the work was done, but I thought it would be fixed now. (They tell me it's normal). Anybody know what I'm talking about, or is my engine screwed? Thanks in advance.

 

Do you think it might be some light pinging?

 

It's detonation, what octane fuel are you running? Do you have a programmer that advances the timing? I had a little from time to time when stock, using the HPPIII engine tuning. A bottle of octane booster would take it right away in my case.

 

The best stuff I can get out here is 91 Octane. Which really blows, but there ya go. How bad is this for my engine? Are you sure it's detonation? It's different than I imagined it. Oh, and I have no programming cabability here. It's all stock.

 

When my car was pinging it wouldn't do it until near redline. Sounded like very fast tink tink tink. I don't use the programmer anymore so no problems, but all I would do is pour a bottle of outlaw octane booster in and drive it a bit and get it all mixed up good. When I would take it to redline again it might tink once or twice then no more. Try it again and it was gone completely. Try some octane booster and see if that helps, if you don't have anything advancing the timing, then the octane booster should do the trick if it is indeed pre-ignition. Supposedly the computer will pull timing to compensate, but mine never did, so I took care of it myself. If it did indeed pull timing, that would also lower performance. If detonation is bad enough it can destroy your engine, hole in piston, burnt valve. Maybe you got some poor gas last time out, just don't keep it floored when this occurs and try to get it sorted out.

 

Copy that, thanks. Will I be running octane boost for the duration, or will 1 tank of mixed gas fix it up? If she blows up, I'd actually be the happiest guy on earth. 15k more miles on my warrentee, and the guys down at the dealership were jerks to me. I tried having them look at it, but I just keep getting "It's normal sir, we can't help you."