Does anybody know if its normal if im driving at about 60-65 and the rpm's are at 18-1900 and if I start to go up a little hill and the engine starts pinning but goes away when it down shifts.Does anybody know?

 

RPMs look same as mine with 3.73 diffs.
Some pinging going up hill ? happens to me sometimes.
All depends on fuel quality ,altitude,load etc.
So I would not worry about it, unless you have some DTCs.

 

Dad's 00 did that when the cat pluged up?

 

how long has it been doing it? maintenance history, plugs, coils, o2s?? fuel economy history? many questions but need more info, my truck was doing the same thing with decreasing fuel economy. switching from 8 month old bosch o2s to motorcraft did it for me after doing a full tune up.

my truck never had a cel or code, even when 2 plugs were very badly fouled and pinging like crazy. the truck didn't do it when I 1st got it with 98,000 started doing it at 126000 and my mpgs went from 12 to 5 over a year trying to figure it out.

 

First, run the tank almost dry and throw 5-10 gallons of 93 octane in it and see if it helps any. If it does NOT help, it's not "pinging". If it DOES help, come back and we'll work on it.

 

well to start off, I will try to run the tank down and put 93 in it.

I bought the truck a year ago with 57,000 on it and I have 68,000 on it now.I only noticed it when I started pulling a heavy load. Never really noticed before that.

My Tires are 315-75-16 and gears are 3.73 and I get about 10.5-11.5 on highway and 7.5-9 pulling a load. I have not replaced plugs, coils or anything. The only thing i've done is put a Hypertech Max Power in Thats it.
I will check this weekend if it does it driving empty.

 

My guess is on the Hypertech Max Power causing the issue. Most off the shelf tuners are not that good. You may still get the ping in stock tuning but I don't think the Hypertech is helping much either. If you want quality tunes talk to Mike at 5 Star. As you might have guessed he's a popular guy in this forum.

 

Back last summer pulling my trailer up the Grapevine at 6% grade, I noticed a slight knock at 4k RPM. Ibrought the RPMs down a little to prevent it. It reminded me of my old 4 cylinder, 2.3L Cougar back in the '80s.

 

Not normal. A slight amount of spark knock when lugging the engine in OD under 1500 can happen sometimes with stock or custom tuning.

Before putting 93 octane in the truck, return the truck to the stock tuning and check for spark knock. (pinging) Honestly if its only a slight knock 89 will probably get rid of it.

The truck will be more knock sensitive towing because of the increased engine load. The oversized tires and improper gearing is increasing the engine load even more. I suspect the truck could use new spark plugs and some other small maintenence items however the Hypertech tune combined with the shotty ethanol blend fuel may be the root cause of the problem. In my experience any stock canned tune is not ideal, your best bet is going with a custom tune.

 

That tuner, does it require a higher octane than 87?

 

87 is the econ tune then 93 tune but i've never ran that tune.