Hello all

Well it has been quite a frustrating ride. I bought my car w/ 30K on it. My truck now has 40K on it. When I bought the truck it pinged badly. I fiqured I could fix it... I replaced the original AGSF-32F plugs w/ AGSF-32FM plugs from Auto Zone (A lot cheaper) . Didn't seem to help much. The old plugs at 30K looked very warn FROM the pinging. Drove the truck w/ these new plugs till now (40K). Pinging seemed as worse as ever... until a couple days ago.

What I did to fix it:

I cleaned my MAF. If you ask me, it wasn't dirty. I sprayed it with QD Electronic cleaner. Smelled like Acetone if you ask me. By the way, you can get the tamper proof torx tool at CHECKERS (@ $5) . I also checked all my reference voltages and resistances on the MAF, IAT, IAC, ECT and so forth....

Next, I noticed that the ECT harness was laying up against the radiater hose. NO BIG DEAL, I thought, I'll just make it so it doesn't touch the radiater hose. It was touching it so much that it rubbed a black mark into the hose.... as if it had been like that for a while...

Oh, and of course I'd unplugged the neg battery cable...

Took it for a ride and Whalla! Pinging has been pretty much fixed. I can excellerate to 70 mph on the freeway on a grade with just a very very slight ping, which is normal. The engine feels strong, I can feel the difference!!!! My truck has never run this good!

IMPORTANT NOTE:

My truck (2.5L) has two sensor/sending units screwed into the thermistat housing. From what I gather one is just for the temperature gauge (gray connector) and the other (brown connector) is for the PCM. The harness for the temperature gauge was the one laying against the radiater hose. HOWEVER, this harness soon joins the harness for the PCM sensor.

Heat causes a wires resistance capacity to become unstable (learned this in PHYSICS I, II, III classes in college). My resistance variables were changing to much for the PCM to adequately set up AIR/FUEL mixture tables or whatever in the PCM is the only thing I can think.

Inspected my plugs, they look okay still even after driving on them for 10K.

What do you think? Was it the MAF cleaning or the ECT wires heating up?

My temperature gauge still sits at about the same place it did before the harness was fixed.

Thanks.

 

thats a great post and im glad you fixed your pinging problem. however that is a very common problem on rangers and it is very well known, we could have saved you all that trouble and just told you it was the mass air flow sensor. mine was completely shot, so i had to replace it with a napa unit for $100, runs great now.

 

Hey thanks stRanger706,

I have done a lot of reading on this board. You don't know how much... Except of coarse if you have server access... I personally think it was the harness. I will be putting the harness back where it was, just to test. I did both at the same time (discovered harness problem and cleaned MAF at the same time). Well post here again with results for my own and the boards benefit.

Thanks

 

stRanger706,

I too have replaced my MAF w/ the NAPA unit. Runs a lot better now. Do you still ping at all? What plugs and wires are you running? I'm running the AGSF-32FMs and I still ping a little but not nearly as bad as before the new MAF.

Thanks