I've had a problem with my wife's 2001 CL-S since new (November 2000 Build) with what sounds like a ping to me under load. Up a hill, under load, the car sounds like a 72 Dodge Diesel. I've used every brand and octane gas under the sun:

89 Octane
92 Octane
93 Octane
94 Octane (use this one most regularly)

No results. I saw a few months back that someone had this same problem, but never saw the resolution. I've also tried changing to colder plugs and that didn't work either. I think the car is a great car for the money (wouldn't have bought it if I didn't), but I can't get any help or satisfaction from the dealer. The dealer says it's bad gas -- how can every fu*&in' gas pump within 50 miles have bad gas? Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Scott

 

I would definitely suggest making a tech drive your car to hear it. Something is amiss here. Is there another dealer around that you can go to?

 

Tried that...a couple of the techs say that they hear it, the service manager and regional manager of course, cannot. My hope was that someone else has had this problem and found a fix.

The way I see it I have a few possible courses of action:

1) Sue Acura to get out of the car. Seems pretty pointless when this board has people with 4 transmission failures and they won't budge.

2) Try to find a dynomometer and see if I can use a motor stethescope to hear where the noise is coming from under load.

3) Live with it unil it pings itself into a problem -- not my favorite option, mainly because I don't think these cars should do this.

 

Where the hell can u get 92 93 or even 94 Octance. Here in California, the highest is 91????????

 

Each state is different. When I want some "fun", I go to a 76-station and mix-in some 100-octane unleaded with the piss-water 91-octane.

http://www.76.com

(you can find a list of stations in CA that carry the 100 unleaded)

BTW, it’s expensive and, IMO, you don't need pure 100...

And hear is a table to use to mix with the 91 to get a "target octane"...

 

This is the first complaint that I can remember about pinging. Either, your car has a problem that the rest of us do not know about, ot you are hearing something that is normal for these cars.

Sounds like you have done the gas check enough. I would suggest either another dealer, or a specialty Acura/Honda shop - maybe they can diagnose it and then take that diagnosis to a dealer for warranty repair. Or, shout out to anyone in your area who has a similar car, meet up with them and compare - maybe you are hearing a normal noise - who knows.

 

A trip to the dealer -- for sure....


BTW, there were a few TLS drivers that had problems with "pinging" with the 91-octane in CA. It did go away with a few gallons of 100-octane mixed in...

The octane mixing can help diagnose, but should NOT be considered as the "fix" when pinging is really bad. (The amount of pinging vs. humidity and temp can also be help diagnose problems -- sometimes...)

 

How many miles you have? I have 38k and solved my pinging for $7.