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Is This Ping? [VIDEO]

maxitoman007

Member
Joined
Feb 15, 2017
Location
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
The Issue:

So I recently did a head gasket job on my lifted 1987 740 turbo wagon. It drove great the day after the repair, however it has gradually developed a click/ping like sound that I can't identify (more information below). I've never actually heard ping so I'm not sure what to listen for.

Here's the link for the videos:

https://imgur.com/a/sMPIQWy

Vehicle Information:

The car is a lifted 1987 740 turbo wagon with some mods. These mods include:

- 44 trim T3/T4 turbo at 26psi
- XSPower T3 exhaust manifold (higher quality replica of Ebay manifold)
- External wastegate adapter with genuine tial 38mm wastegate
- Big Ebay intercooler
- Browntops
- Stock AMM
- IPD Turbo Cam
- 3" straight pipe exhaust
- Manual boost controller
- Wideband O2
- Cone filter intake
- 13mm rods

The Story:

So until recently I last drove the car in June 2020 when I managed to blow the old Ebay T3/T4 turbo I had as well as blow the headgasket (LOOOOTS of smoke). I decided over winter break to do the headgasket. Oil was milky which confirmed my suspicions of a blown headgasket. I also drained the intercooler which had about 2L of oil inside from the blown turbo. The headgasket job went well and I installed the new victor reinz headgasket and new headbolts.

I took the car out and began re-tuning the boost using the manual boost controller. All was well and I settled on 25 psi with AFRs reaching 13s at WOT. I realize now that this is a bit lean for boost, but more on that later. I proceeded to make several pulls with no issues whatsoever, no breaking up during boost etc.

I drove the car the next day with the same settings after doing some research on proper boost AFRs to see what I was running. To my surprise, the car was breaking up under boost and did not seem to run properly during boost. I did however notice that I was hitting redline in first gear without noticing a couple times and that may have been responsible for some of the "breaking up" I thought I was experiencing. By the end of the drive the car seemed to be driving okay with slight breaking up under boost.

I waited to drive the car a couple days while I installed a new boost gauge and took the car out again today. I had been doing a bit of research on ping in my spare time recently (how convenient) and decided to try to really start listening to the engine this time. At first I didn't hear much as I drove the car around waiting for it to warm up and enter open loop. Once the car was in open loop I took it for a pull. First gear was okay and I tapped redline with one cut by accident. I shifted to second gear and the car was breaking up under acceleration. I used teh adjustment screw on the MAF to try help richen up the AFRs under boost as I noticed they were too lean for my liking. I adjusted the base idle AFR from hovering around 14.7 to hovering around 13.5. This did seem to richen up boost AFRs however AFRs soon became the leas of my concerns. As I kept driving the car I begun to notice a clicking sound under load which got more and more noticeable until it was to the point in the video.

Diagnosis/Troubleshooting I have done:

When I started hearing the sound I immediately began driving the car lighter and stayed out of boost. I noticed the car would only make sound under load which pointed to ping. The sound would also be louder at lower RPMs and higher loads.

It is worth noting that with 33" tires, the load on my engine is likely higher than most other b230fts.

The noise is now noticeable to the point where I'm reasonably confident in saying it wasn't doing that on the first drive out after the headgasket job. I would have noticed.

Lean AFRs?

The sound occurs with AFRs anywhere from 11s to 13s the car normally only hits 14s when cruising or idling when the sound can't be heard. These richer AFRs are one thing that pointed towards the sound not being ping

Ignition Timing off?

Checked base timing with a timing light and it was still at the stock 12 degrees BTDC. Manually revved the engine using the throttle body and timing seems to advance properly.

Cam Timing off?

Car has an adjustable cam gear but it is currently set straight up (head is not decked, I checked the head height). I did not check to make sure all timing marks still line up however I'd be extremely surprised if the didn't.

Knock Sensor?

To diagnose, the knock sensor was unplugged and a different knock sensor which wasn't bolted to the block was connected (this simulated the engine running with no knock being detected). Timing advanced just as it did when the cable was connected to the sensor on the block. This made me think the knock sensor was not faulty.

It is worth noting however that when free revving in neutral, the sound can't be heard unless the pedal is mashed to the floor rapidly (causing sudden minor load). When revving the engine by hand I was not imitating this sudden revving which means that the sound likely wasn't being produced (no pinging, if that's what it is, was occurring). Subsequently, I likely wouldn't have been able to see the knock sensor retard timing using a timing light because the engine wouldn't have been pinging.

Carbon deposits?

All carbon deposits on the valves and piston tops were removed during the headgasket job. There is one small knick on piston 1 which could have sharp enough edges to possibly cause pinging, however I think this is an unlikely possibility considering the noise wasn't being made during the first tests after the headgasket job.

Bad Spark Plugs?

Spark plugs were replaced during headgasket job. BR7ES (same as BPR7ES just without a protruding center electrode (P=protruding). I've read on Mitsubishi Evo forums that their cars run better with the BRs vs the BPRs). These plugs were gapped to the stock gap .028"

Bad Gas?

In terms of fuel. during my owning the car has only received Husky 93 or Shell 91 (which is often measured to be closer to 93). When I began the headgasket job, the car had about half a tank of old gas from June. I did however make my first pulls using this gas and the car ran great so I don't believe that fuel was bad. I proceeded to fill the half full tank with Husky 93 on the first test day and continued driving, the car continued to drive perfect for the rest of the day. As the fuel level got lower the noise and breaking up during boost got worse and worse. Today when pinging was extremely noticeable I had run the tank down just over halfway. I decided to test if it was just a bad batch of gas. I purchased a bottle of octane booster and poured that in the under half full tank and filled the tank the rest of the way with Shell 91 (I did not use husky 93 in case the whole batch at the gas station was poor quality). I drove the car around fro about 15 minutes to the point where I was confident the higher octane gas was being run through the injectors. It still makes the noise.

Possible future courses of action:

Here are a few things I have yet to do that could possibly aid in finding the solution:

- Reset AMM back to where it was with idle around 14.7 to see if it fixes the issue (unlikely to fix as richening the mixture shouldn't have caused ping to start occuring)

- Unplug knock sensor and observe timing advance (I remember reading that when the knock sensor is unplugged it automatically defaults to pulling timing as if knock is being detected. Not sure on how true this is though) If this is true, it would allow me to see what the timing advance looks like when timing is being pulled and would allow me to compare to when the sensor is plugged in

- pull spark plugs and look for signs of pinging (the car has only been driven around 300km on the plugs though so I'm not sure if that is long enough for signs to be shown on the electrodes)

After that I'm lost. Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide. I apologize for the long post however I figured it would be best to fully explain the situation.
 
Well for whoever stumbles across this later. The sound in the video was most likely caused by this which I discovered today...

1FbtuqGl.jpg


The good news is that it wasn't ping like I was scared of. The weld connecting runner one to the flange on the exhaust manifold has cracked causing an exhaust leak.
Time to repair and reinforce.
 
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LH 2.2? Stock ECU and EZK? The chip I sell has acceleration enrichment which fixes the pinging at boost onset if you have that common up the boost 2.2 problem. So you just slapped in the 42lb browntops with no other adjustment mods?
 
Not so sure about the XSpower being any different than the other Chinabay specials.

I’ve had a b230ft eBay manifold before and the XSpower weighed significantly more with thicker walled tubing. The first one also ended up cracking in the same area as this one suggesting that it is a common fault area in my set up. Time to start looking into bracing setups.

26 psi on LH, bold strategy cotton. No chips or anything?

No chips. Dropped in brown tops, and set the idle mixture adjustment screw on the stock 2.5” MAF to full lean. This had my idle AFRs hanging right around 14.7. Did some test pulls and found that AFRs were getting into mid-high 13s at full boost (26.7psi according to my greddy E-01 boost controller). Discovered that this was a bit high for my liking so I set the adjustment screw richer so it idled with an AFR around 13.5. This seemed to help keep the AFRs around high 12s to low 13s in boost. I was planning on doing more experimenting with richer MAF adjustments when I begun hearing the sound (which at the time I thought was ping and therefore discouraged me from performing any further test pulls). I’m tempted to try get my hands on a 4 bar FPR and/or bigger injectors to get that last little bit of fuel to comfortably hit the ~30psi mark. Anything above 35psi and I’m sure I’d be running the turbo in efficiently (although I haven’t been able to find a proper compressor map for my current compressor wheel to find out.

LH 2.2? Stock ECU and EZK? The chip I sell has acceleration enrichment which fixes the pinging at boost onset if you have that common up the boost 2.2 problem. So you just slapped in the 42lb browntops with no other adjustment mods?

I am on LH 2.2 with stock ECU and EZK yes. Chips might be worth looking into although ping hasn’t been an issue yet (I still question what ping sounds like on these engines and if I’d be able to hear it with my hood dump exhaust). As for the browntop installation, see above.
 
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I've used the LH2.2 chip on my friends 88 740T. It made it run much better even with stock injectors and the boost only turned up to about 10psi.

Is your engine still the stock 87 engine? If so it's a small rod engine which isn't the most robust setup Volvo made. An exhaust leak like that very often makes a clicking sound which can sound like valvetrain noise. Try lowering the plug gap to about .026". At those power levels any weakness in your driveline is going to show up.
 
13.5 at idle is (I would say normal) I doubt a B230 will idle well at 14.7

Good to know. Might try to richen it up even more to get a bit more fuel under boost

Is your engine still the stock 87 engine? If so it's a small rod engine which isn't the most robust setup Volvo made. An exhaust leak like that very often makes a clicking sound which can sound like valvetrain noise. Try lowering the plug gap to about .026". At those power levels any weakness in your driveline is going to show up.

I upgraded to the 13mm rods from a later turbo motor. I’ve also done a CD009 swap with a stage 3 clutch, so holding the power hopefully shouldn’t be an issue.

I've used the LH2.2 chip on my friends 88 740T. It made it run much better even with stock injectors and the boost only turned up to about 10psi.

This chip is starting to sound like a decent option..
 
The chip we used was from sbabbs. Sounds like you have a nice strong driveline. When we chipped my friends car. First we put a IPD turbo cam in. Then we drove it and it drove better. Then after installing the chipped ecu. It ran another step stronger and it even made the engine note sound better. Of course that might have been the enthusiasm. :lol:
 
The chip we used was from sbabbs. Sounds like you have a nice strong driveline. When we chipped my friends car. First we put a IPD turbo cam in. Then we drove it and it drove better. Then after installing the chipped ecu. It ran another step stronger and it even made the engine note sound better. Of course that might have been the enthusiasm. :lol:

I?ll have to talk to him about that.
 
It's all the same crap with a diff name and diff price....ss autocrap, xs power all the same garbage, thicker wall or not the design is still not strong

Fair enough. Hopefully the thicker walls at least hold up better than the previous iteration which cracked much worse.

Mine idles around around 14.4 to 14.7.....it idles perfect

I did some further experimenting with richening up the mixture using the maf and found that it only really affected the idle mixture not the mixture under boost. Idle has been set back to around 14.3 and it seems to idle decently. I had some more breaking up/backfiring out exhaust/lack of power under boost (knock sensor pulling timing possibly?) when set to 27 psi so I’ve dialed it back to 24 psi. Seems to be happier now. I’m tempted to unplug the knock sensor d as no plug in a dummy knock sensor and up boost to see if the knock sensor was causing the breaking up.
 
that was an adventure. I think Bob pointed out that the wiring wasn't correct. It can work if you set it up like Gary did with the relay in his thread. But overall I agree with the decision to use something else. Even just doing the basic setup like mentioned with the blaster coil.

You could try some fancy plugs like the iridium ones. The iridium and the platinum plugs have a lower arc over voltage than the copper plug so it might help with the spark blowout. I'd also change the gap to something like Gary suggested at .024" or .026".
 
that was an adventure. I think Bob pointed out that the wiring wasn't correct. It can work if you set it up like Gary did with the relay in his thread. But overall I agree with the decision to use something else. Even just doing the basic setup like mentioned with the blaster coil.

You could try some fancy plugs like the iridium ones. The iridium and the platinum plugs have a lower arc over voltage than the copper plug so it might help with the spark blowout. I'd also change the gap to something like Gary suggested at .024" or .026".

Definitely could be a good idea. I may end up purchasing the official MSD tach adapter just so that I can be certain I have it wired in correctly and give it one last shot. I'd probably get a blaster coil to go along with it anyways. If the MSD ends up not working I could throw it up for sale on here for the LH 2.4 folks to give it a try.

Side note, does anybody know where to get a coil to head mount distributor wire that is compatible with the blaster coils? From what I've heard, the connections are different for the stock coil VS the blaster.
 
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