Hi all -
Want to pick your collective brain on a weird problem I had with my Dakota
last night. I was driving home from work on the highway at about 70 mph,
and was behind someone in the left-hand lane who was traveling about 55-60
mph. There was another car coming up in the middle lane fairly quickly, so
I decided to use a little V8 muscle (insert appropriate Tim Allen grunt
here) to get around the slower car. I downshifted to fourth (I have the
5-speed), and floored it. My truck took off, but at WOT (at about 3500-4000
rpm) I started to hear a clattering noise which seemed to be coming from the
lower portion of the engine. I let off the gas, and the noise subsided, but
when I tried again a little further down the road, ...downshift, punch it,
same noise, I got a little worried. Was this an internal engine problem, a
rod knocking or something? Once I got closer to home, I tried a couple of
jackrabbit WOT starts from a full stop, ran through the gears, and I wasn't
getting the same noise.
I'm wondering if this is just "pinging" (I run 87 octane as recommended by
the owners manual) , or if perhaps the computer wasn't having enough time to
adjust the timing when I went from loafing along at 70 mph in 5th gear, to
romping on it in fourth gear?? There was a discussion about a year ago,
about whether or not the higher octane gas was worth the extra
$$$/performance, or whether it had any effect on increasing engine life, and
it seemed to be all personal preference and/or gas company propaganda.
Consumer Reports (I know, I know) recently did a comparison on gas
performance, and it showed no real differences in mileage/performance
between regular octane, and higher octane gas, nor any real difference
between the new RFG as opposed to gas from about 10 years ago. My truck is
only a year old, and it only has 13,600 miles on it, that's why I was a
little concerned about hearing knocking/pinging already. Maybe it has
something to do with the oxygenated RFG they use in my area (CT) in the
winter... Hopefully, by early next spring, MP will have released some of
the performance parts for the '96 Dakota 5.2, and I can get the MP SBEC, and
start running the hi-octance gas. (read ka-ching!)
Do y'all have any ideas, comments, suggestions, similar problems, etc. etc.,
I'd like to hear 'em.... Thanks in advance.
Ned Vogler | ----------------------------
Network Administrator | _ _ _ _ _ _
Rockville General Hospital | |_` |_` _ |_| |_| |_ |_| |_`
(nvogler@rghosp.chime.org) | ,_| | | | |_ |\ ,_|
'96 Dakota SLT V8 5-sp 4x4 Club Cab |
'84 Nighthawk 650 '85 Honda XR-350R | ----------------------------
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