Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and McCormack
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2008
- Messages
- 346
- Vehicle Year
- 2000
- Transmission
- Automatic
The 3.0 comes from the factory with it's ignition timing set right at the limit of pinging, and after 10,000 mi or so deposits start to form in the combustion chambers, and the deposits insulate the combustion chambers which results in more heat, and the engine then pings. It's been my experience that Seafoam and other de-carbon treatments do nothing to clean the carbon out of an engine.
Running a 180* T-stat and doing the hotwater bypass has cured the pings for many 3.0 Ranger owners, but if that doesn't work and you don't want to incur the expense of running premium, then buy a tuner and retard your engine's timing a degree at a time until the pinging goes away. Yes you will lose a slight amount of power by retarding the timing, but losing a bit of power is better than having your engine eat itself up through pinging. If you don't want to spend the $ on a tuner, then it may be possible to talk your local Ford dealer into retarding your timing for you - my local dealer was willing to do that for me, but I ended buying an X-Cal and did it myself.
Running a 180* T-stat and doing the hotwater bypass has cured the pings for many 3.0 Ranger owners, but if that doesn't work and you don't want to incur the expense of running premium, then buy a tuner and retard your engine's timing a degree at a time until the pinging goes away. Yes you will lose a slight amount of power by retarding the timing, but losing a bit of power is better than having your engine eat itself up through pinging. If you don't want to spend the $ on a tuner, then it may be possible to talk your local Ford dealer into retarding your timing for you - my local dealer was willing to do that for me, but I ended buying an X-Cal and did it myself.
