Help -- Engine Pinging
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 54
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From: Jacksonville FL
Thanks everyone very much for your help and advice! I will start stepping through the troubleshooting but the more I think about the more I think this is related to excessive carbon deposits from my approximately 1 qt/1000 mile oil consumption habit. One of you guys said that even if I ran 87 octane the electronics should be able to retard the timing enough that there would still be no pinging. This was never the case since I've had the car.
Interesting side note: I've been doing this oil consumption test with my dealer in order to accumulate enough evidence to take back to GM and fight to get the factory to pay for retrofitting the 2002 pistons. I happen to have a family friend that is very high up in GM and told him of my troubles (the engine has a little piston slap noise when it's warming up on a cold morning as well). He told me he would pass it on to the appropriate people and I told him I would get back to him when I had enough data points and was ready to take it to GM. So I'm at the dealer getting the oil level checked again (I've been trying to collect a data point every 1000 miles) and I'm having discussions with the service woman and service manager. While this is going on another gentleman is standing back and watching. After about 10 mins he calls me over and tells me to step into his office. At this point he tells me he has gotten a call about my Corvette, has seen me coming in regularly, and has listened to me talk and can tell I'm an intelligent guy who knows about cars. Didn't hurt that I had my military uniform on either. He then asks me if I want them to get inside my engine. I tell him that yes, my ultimate goal was to collect enough data that I could then take back to GM to try to get them to cover installing the redesigned 2002 piston. We finally agree for me to collect one more data point in another 1000 miles and then we will go from there. I hate that it takes knowing people in high places to get action on something that GM should be covering for everyone, but that's life and life ain't fair. I do recognize that with the volume of engines that have had this problem (the 6.1L truck engines do it too), GM might go bankrupt if they fixed every one.
Anyway, thanks again to everyone for your help and I'll let you guys know how it turns out.
Mark
Interesting side note: I've been doing this oil consumption test with my dealer in order to accumulate enough evidence to take back to GM and fight to get the factory to pay for retrofitting the 2002 pistons. I happen to have a family friend that is very high up in GM and told him of my troubles (the engine has a little piston slap noise when it's warming up on a cold morning as well). He told me he would pass it on to the appropriate people and I told him I would get back to him when I had enough data points and was ready to take it to GM. So I'm at the dealer getting the oil level checked again (I've been trying to collect a data point every 1000 miles) and I'm having discussions with the service woman and service manager. While this is going on another gentleman is standing back and watching. After about 10 mins he calls me over and tells me to step into his office. At this point he tells me he has gotten a call about my Corvette, has seen me coming in regularly, and has listened to me talk and can tell I'm an intelligent guy who knows about cars. Didn't hurt that I had my military uniform on either. He then asks me if I want them to get inside my engine. I tell him that yes, my ultimate goal was to collect enough data that I could then take back to GM to try to get them to cover installing the redesigned 2002 piston. We finally agree for me to collect one more data point in another 1000 miles and then we will go from there. I hate that it takes knowing people in high places to get action on something that GM should be covering for everyone, but that's life and life ain't fair. I do recognize that with the volume of engines that have had this problem (the 6.1L truck engines do it too), GM might go bankrupt if they fixed every one.
Anyway, thanks again to everyone for your help and I'll let you guys know how it turns out.
Mark
