Is there really no recall for the spark plug TSB? (6-3-3) If so, I find that incredulous.
Naturally I've now brought this TSB to the attention of my dealer, and Ford Australia. (waiting for a response). I want them to inspect my engine per the TSB, and naturally, also replace the spark plugs.

Has anyone here actually replaced the plugs with the PZT1F and found that their pinging improved, or disappeared altogether? I haven't found any *first hand* evidence of this yet.

Greg.

 

Well after reading all the ideas on canuks pinging problem, Fishin76 was the guy that actually came closest to it. I have a 04 fx4 with the 5.4 3 valve never really had any pinging issues till i towed my 32 ft camper weighing 7200 lbs empty. I could just barely tell it was pinging some. I recently changed out my plugs at 44,000 miles after hearing all probs out there. I read in a ford tsb dont ask which one ive looked at hundreds that in cases of bad ping evidently in the more recent years like 05,06 etc, they recomend the pzt-1ff4 it is one step cooler and they say this takes care of it.. I used the FORD RACING PLUGS M-12405 3V0 they run 2 ranges cooler, some say that this may be too cool and perhaps foul quickly ive had mine in and have 500 miles run now and just pulled my camper home up hills NO PINGING at all. now maybe i would not have had to spend 20.00 per plug to get this done and just opted for the motorcrat pzt-1s i guess time will tell. im going to pull my plugs at 3000 miles and see how they look the ford racing plugs are designed for a more aggressive engine with blowers and high compression i think they use these on gt-40 i could be wrong any way give the cooler plugs a try! I think this is why most dealerships skirt this issue they dont want to have to deal with plug uninstall!! best of luck canuk be careful with the plugs they are tender.

 

I have now installed the PZT1F-F4 plugs, but it has NOT stopped my pinging - in fact I don't think it has made the slightest improvement.

Greg.

 

G220, If the cooler range plugs did not help, I think you need to get your dealer to retime your entire engine. This is the only reason I can think of that would cuase the pinging you describe. Since this engine has chain driven cams, the chain may have streched or was defective from the factory. Could have been just set up wrong too. Seems to me that they need to dig deeper now that the top end has been looked at with a microscope.

Just my $.02.

 

It's amazing what a few 10th's more of chain length can do to an engines timing.

 

Thanks for the advice.

Just by the way, when I took the car to a dyno tuner, and went for a test drive with them, they seemed surprised by the characteristics of my pinging, in that it pinged just off idle, when accelerating gently. (it continues to ping at moderate throttle too). They said that just recently they had another customer with the same engine, but that one's pinging was all up the top of the rev range.

Greg.

 

I have the same engine in my Expedition, with the same symptoms to start, and found out the fuel injector was stuck open and damaged the rod in my engine. My understanding is that this is a common problem in these engines. Might be worth having the fuel injector checked out. One other symptom I noticed was that when I jacked up my truck to check for leaks, etc. I found a liquid dripping from the muffler (that's not a typo), and the catalytic convertor that had a strong gasoline odor. I searched everywhere for a fuel line leak and couldn't find one. Hope you have better luck than I ran into.

 

Funny you should mention injectors - the mechanic who put my plugs in said (after I told him they didn't help) that his first step would be to check out the injectors. This chap is an independent. For better or for worse, I've once again given the car to my dealer, and this time I've told them to keep it until it's fixed. I'll give them a heads up re: the injectors, just to make sure.

Thanks,
Greg.

 

Hope I helped in some way. I'm miderable without my truck right now.

 

I am having a similar problem as some of you. My truck is pinging slightly when accelerating moderately. If I give the truck alot of gas, no ping. Truck has just 6,000 miles on it, which is way too low to be having problems like this. I will likely be at the dealership soon.

 

Good luck bassaway.

Just an update on my situation - the dealership has done some more work, and so far it does seem quite a bit better, but unfortunately it hasn't fixed the problem altogether. Two things I know they have done are a) an upper engine clean, and b) replaced the knock sensor. They said that the knock sensor was replaced as a precaution, not because they were sure it was defective. (the upper engine clean was precautionary as well, I suppose - they didn't open up the engine so they could not be sure there were any deposits) They may well have done other remedial work which they have not yet told me about - in my experience it is extremely difficult to get a thorough report from dealerships on what work they did. One other thing which they *may* have done, which I have yet to confirm, is to *downgrade* the ECU software. I say this because it is something I requested for another problem I'm having, and the car is driving differently, so maybe they did in fact do this. If they did, then perhaps the older software has had an effect on the pinging.

I'm booked in with a dyno tuner, but now that I perceive an improvement, I may cancel, and just live with it the way it is - I'll think about it. Note that I am currently using 95 RON petrol - I have not tried the minimum specified RON (being 91) yet. It pings a bit on 95 so I expect I won't like 91. I did briefly try 98 when I first got the car back and it didn't ping at all.

Just as an interesting aside, our octane specification numbers here in Australia are different to yours - we use the Research Octane Number (RON), whereas apparently you use a number which is the average of the RON and the Motor Octane Number (MON), which results in a number which is about 4 to 5 points below ours, for the same rating. So, given that my engine is rated for 91 RON, I'm assuming that it's tuned for the same fuel as yours because yours is rated for 87.

Greg.
Australian built Ford Fairlane BA G220 using 5.4L 3V engine.

 

G220, How much was the dyno going to cost you? Would it be possible to detect and document pinging from the data the dyno provides?

 

re: dyno tyne pricing, remember I'm in Australia so the prices here may not reflect your prices. The place I'm currently booked in at will charge about AU$1300.00, including the FLASH tuner box. Very expensive indeed. If using high octane fuel solves the problem, that would almost certainly be more cost effective for me. However, I'm being half driven by morbid curiousity in all of this.

They can detect pinging, yes. One place I called said they use a microphone. I believe the place I'm booked in at use the signal from the knock sensor but I'm not 100% sure.

Btw, the dealer has performed a compression test, which came back ok. Phew!

Greg.
Australian built Ford Fairlane BA G220 using 5.4L 3V engine.

 

I had my first go-round with the dealer. Dropped it off Thursday afternoon and got a call Friday mid-afternoon saying that their mechanics couldn't replicate the pinging...big surprise. I then went to the dealer and took the mechanic for a ride and made him listen for the noise. His response..."Yeap...its pinging". Since the service dept was closed on Saturday they couldn't do anything further. I dropped it off again this morning (Monday) and waited all day and didn't hear anything so I went by after I got off work. It was still parked where I left it this morning so I don't know if they looked at it or not, but they said they did and found nothing wrong, which basically means they tried pulling the codes and found none. They then went on to say that I should try a higher grade fuel and I told them for the second time that fuel is not the problem, as I have had the problem on 2 tanks of gas from two different stations (1 chevron, 1 exxon). Plus, a brand new F-150 with only 6,000 miles on it should not require higher grade fuel to run normal. Especially if it was running normal 3 weeks ago and has gradually worsened. I believe I am going to try another dealer this Friday. I wonder at what point do I try fixing it myself.

 

All sounds alllllllllllllllllll too familiar.

Another update: The dealer said that "no upgrades were done this time", referring to the ECU firmware. I had asked them whether they had in fact downgraded (per an earlier request), or changed the firmware in any way. I'm assuming that their response means that they didn't change the firmware at all, but of course I'm wondering whether they're trying to avoid telling me that they did in fact downgrade the firmware.

Assuming the firmware is the same, and they didn't do anything else substantial, then it appears that when they cleaned the upper engine (for a second time), using some "new fluid", that this resulted in the improvement.
Btw, they said that they do not think that the knock sensor replacement caused the improvement.

I've decided NOT to get a dyno tune, because I can live with it the way it is now. (no pinging on 98/93, and only very light and occasional pinging on 95/90).

Bassaway: it may actually be worth asking them to put an older version of firmware in your ECU, as an experiment. Naturally it is very hard to believe that your engine would require cleaning at such a young age.

Greg.
Australian built Ford Fairlane BA G220 using 5.4L 3V engine.