Heavy Pinging And Knocking On My 02 ACR. Need help!

[Toronto_ACR]

I just started driving my 02 ACR for the first time this year today. It had a quarter of a tank of gas so I went and put in another half tank of gas at Sunoco. Used the 93 of course. I noticed that the car had heavy pinging and knocking at wide open throttle in 4 th gear. It was bad enough that i was worried that it could blow a head gasket. I was worried about this when i had my Grand national with 20 IBS of boost. But I never expected this to happen on my Viper. I never had this problem last year. can someone tell me what has happened from this year to before i stored it last November. What must i do to fix it. Do I need to clean the injectors and replace the fuel filter and spark plugs or is it a faulty oxygen sensor that makes the car run way to lean. Please help me before I blow a head gasket

Thanks

 

[Schulmann]

If it is the first time that you use your Viper this year and you had only a 1/4 tank of gas for the entire winter in your tank than you blow up your fueling system ... you have maybe water in your tank or your gas turned green ...

What you have to do ? Emty the entire fueling system, clean it and put new gas in your tank. Change the fuel filter and have a look inside the Tank to see if it is rusted.

First time I see this and it happens on a 70000$US car !!!

 

[Craig 201 MPH]

Viper gas tanks are plastic are they not? kinda hard for that to rust.

You probably got some really crappy gas or something. I'd drain it, re-fill then see if it does it again. Did you go to one of the newer stations or one of those old crappy ones with a "NO ENGLISH" attendant? I've found in toronto that the old sunocos with the 30 year old pumps always have crappy gas. If they havn't upgraded their pumps their storage tanks are likely just as old. What station was it?

 

[Rollin4]

I had the same problem awhile ago, it wasn't from the car sitting up, it was from getting some bad gas. You probably have some water in the tank from it sitting up or the station you bought the gas at. I added a can of Lucas fuel system cleaner on the next fillup.Drive the car normally (no WOT) until it's time to refill. Hopes this solves it.

 

[Daniel Cragin/DC Performance Inc]

Detonation can be caused by many things, give me a call and we can discus this. I have been able to correct this problem on all the cars we have had.

 

[BobK898]

Nice move Dan. Gotta love it.

 

[Toronto_ACR]

Dan what is your phone number. As for the cheap gas station I think that Craig201mph might be correct about cheap gas from old gas stations. It was at the Sunoco on Evans Av. and hwy.427

Is the gas tank plastic and can it really rust if it was sitting for so long. I also wanted to know if you guys thought that the O2 sensors should be changed. When should an O2 sensor be changed as i have the Mopar computer in it and it runs very rich. Will this foul the O2 sensor or is the sensor not an issue with logevity

Thanks for you input

 

[Schulmann]

Dirty gas would not cause this type of problem.
It is either water, bad gas or rust in the fueling system.

(I didn't know that the tank was plastic )

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Hi there.

Water in the gas would not make it knock, it would actually supress knocking (even from making it lean.)

"Old" gas used to lose butane and lighter components, which were actually good octane components. But gasoline hasn't been formulated that way in some time, so the octane of one-winter old gas is still the same.

Injectors foul only under high temperature heat soaking, such as many engine offs after city driving. Heat rises under the hood and cooks the fuel in the injector. Won't do this over the winter.

Combustion chamber deposits tend to flake off with time as they absorb moisture from the air, so I don't think it's that, either.

Rust (from the service station) would plug the filter, but boy, you'd need a lot. Even so, when a filter plugged on another car, it was more like the engine ran out of breath and couldn't go any more, rather than knocking.

Sunoco often uses blending pumps to provide customers many choices of octane, from 85 up to 98 or so. The station does not have a tank of each, rather, a tank of the lowest and the highest octane. When you select your octane grade, the pump mixes the high and low together to give you what you wanted. Besides just having the wrong octane in the pump (a potentially serious problem with regulatory commissions) the pump blending might not be set correctly.

After all my blah-blah, I do think it's a bad batch of fuel, too. Try a fresh tank before you spend too much money. (Don't try an octane booster.)

 

[ronviper]

TorontoACR i thought that chrome cap was where you piss in, i'm sorry that might explain your detontation or pinging problem.