I have a '92 Explorer 4Dr., 4WD with 164,000 miles on the clock. It looks and drives like new. I do most of my own maintenance. I purchased my Explorer almost 3 years ago from the original owner who had the vehicle dealer maintained since it was new. There was one problem that I experienced from the time that I purchased it that was beginning to drive me nuts. PING!!!! I tried all the solutions mentioned on this page with limited results until I tried the following which completely cured my problem!!!

In my case it would appear that the ping was the result of carbon buildup in the combustion chambers. After trying everything mentioned on this page I narrowed it down to the carbon problem. Here's my fix.

On the left rear corner of the intake manifold is a vacuum port cluster, one of the ports has a simple rubber plug covering it. Remove the plug and attach a 4 foot length of vacuum hose to it of the proper diameter. Fill a 16 ounce soda bottle with warm water. Find a friend to sit in the vehicle. Start the engine and have your friend raise the RPMs to approx. 1200. Now take the end of the vacuum hose and put it in the warm water in the bottle. Feed the engine a little at a time over a 5 minute period. Be careful not to give it to much water for to long so as to stall the engine, you can give it to much of a good thing. Take your time and try to maintain a small cloud of steam coming out of the tail pipe. When the engine starts to idle roughly pull the hose out of the water and let the engine smooth out a bit, add more water through the vacuum hose after it's running smoothly again. Continue this process until you've sucked all the water out of the bottle. Let the engine idle for 5 minutes after this process. While you're waiting you can unhook the hose you connected, replace the plug (don't forget to do this). Now go drive your Exploer and notice the difference. You may need to go through this process twice, I did for best results. In my case my Explorer was so bad before I did this that I needed to run Premium in it all the time and still had a problem with ping. With regular it would ping constantly. Now I can burn the cheapest regular around without ever the slightest hint of ping. The steam cleans the inside of all the combustion chambers and removes the carbon without pulling the heads.

I know this sounds to easy but it works GREAT!!!!

 

Unless your name is DrBob. I'm turning you in for plagiarizing. This is a well know post, first on some other web site but then resurrected by a great guy at UC Irvine.

here it is for those interested. http://draco.acs.uci.edu/explorer/ping.html

What are you doing resurrecting a 4 year old post for? And on your first ever post? And you didn't even bother correcting the original gramatical errors when you copied and pasted.

No problem resubmitting public data but give credit where it's due!

 

How do you check for that?

That would be the chain drive to the cam that you're talking about, or the distributer?

I had a '93 SOHC Falcon (Aussie 4.0 l straight 6) that trashed the top end because a keyway slipped on the cam drive.
I had those same pinging and sometimes overheating problems. I didn't know what it was it until it revealed itself catastrophically.

Now I'm getting pinging in the Expy.

 

Flash - take a look at the date on this post string. 2001 Whoever this kwj99 character is, he/she dug this up from 5 years ago.

This discussion was about a 1994 4.0 Explorer. Not sure if this is the same engine you ara having problems with. But on this engine, the crankshaft pulley is on the crank, outside the timing chain cover. Only ral way to check that the key is still there is to remove the fan belt, loosen the pulley bolts and see if it rotates.

 

I have the same problem and the dealer is saying a worn timing chain guide is causing the problem which sounds like a ping but is really metal on metal.

This is consistent with an oil analysis that showed slightly elevated aluminum levels.

The dealer is quoting $1400 to do the front guide but there is also one in the rear of the engine.

My symptoms are ping while warming up just before going into loop mode and when heavily on the gas like on a steep incline.

 

Going into the closed loop mode? Is that what you meant?

This would be before the O2's take over A/F control. Are you sure about this condition, did you watch the open loop on a scanner real time while driving and then see the ping go away once closed loop kicked in? I would think with the heated O2's you have, open loop wouldn't be more than a minute or 2. But sure, if there is a air leak or something and the O2's aren't being used, this could aid to pinging though hard to believe on a cold engine that is getting extra gas anyway basd on coolant temp input. I guess you'll need a little more investigation like looking at the plugs, pulling any codes...

Your signature says " 99 Explorer XLT 4x4, 4.0 SOHC, 5R55E, 3.73 LS" so i assume this is the car you're talking about, not the1975 Ranchero

The SOHC timing chain issue is renown. $1400 is a lot for $100 in parts. Search this forum or the 4.0 forum for discussions. I think they extended the warranty on this issue to 75K miles.

 

Yeah, closed loop mode is what I meant. It doesn't ping when cold. No codes and the plugs look good. But after about a minute or two, the ping starts and then almost goes away, and I think it is when it goes into closed loop mode based on looking at the output of an AutoEnginuity ScanTool. Unfortunately, the tool died shortly thereafter and I just received a new one so I must retest.

Ford Corp. is saying that my VIN number does not apply to the 01M01 campaign. The warranty is extended tp 100,000 in that campaign. I asked them to consider my situation since my car was made in '98 which is covered in the compaign. They called the dealer I use to service my Explorer but they purged all my service files, so Ford Corp. says they can't do anything. I guess all is fair in love, war, and the american corporation.

 

You could call up your local BAR (Bureau of Automitive Repair) and have them work the dealer over for you. They are like the BBB for cars. Besides, it's the manufacture's (Ford) obligation to prove you did something to cause an issue or you didn't, in the case of maintenance. But I've never seen any documentation pointing to lack of maintenance as a cause for the timing chain tensioner issues. It is possible too that this issue is causing your pinging - it is a cam the cahin controls. I'd go to the BAR.

 

I've got all the proof I need to show that the vehicle has been serviced to Ford Corp.'s standards. I scanned the files and offered to email or fax them but they said they could not receive them.

I can't really work over the dealer since they have no warranty on the vehicle. This is an issue that must be taken to Ford Corp. But Ford really has no obligation to do anything since this Explorer is not even covered by their official campaign. I fear fighting it would be a losing battle. The only ramifications is to apply this information when I consider a new vehicle.