Pinging?!
 

Hello all,

New to the site, I look forward to sharing info with eveybody - this seems like a great forum.

Just bought a 2010 gls ET manual 5 speed a couple of months ago, brand new and have been enjoying the great ride and convenience. However, I noticed about a week ago that I could hear it pinging on hills or just under regular driving and loads. I've had cars with a million miles on them before so I am familiar with the sound and its causes but given that the car doesn't even have 2000 miles on it yet I am a little disturbed.

Regular gas is 87 octane here, I haven't tried something higher yet but even if that does solve it, I should be able to run regular right? Anybody else have this issue?

revs
 

I should add too - When I shift gears, even if I'm conscious of getting my foot off the gas before I get the other on the clutch, the rpms fall really slowly, and will even blip up a bit first.

I don't know if its related.....

Thanks for migrating over poly. These boards need some more energy. Now that I chased you over here, I'm hoping some i-30 or ET owners will be able to give you some additional advice over and above the comments about the OEM oil filter I provided you.

It is very normal for the revs to fall slowly or even jump up slightly. It does this for emissions reasons. I had to learn to shift gears extremely slowly just to keep the clutch happy and still it always grinds going into second. The only trick I have is to jump off the gas pedal, step on the clutch ~1/2 second later, then after about another 1/2 to 1 second I will actually shift gears, then watch the revs so I know when to get back on the gas and let the clutch out. It seemed really stupid at first but now i am used to it.

I don't have any pinging problem, but there is a knocking sound the engine makes from ~1800-2500RPM under mid-throttle. I hear it a lot at idle as well.

That sounds like an inordinate amount of work to go through to shift, doesn't it?

What is the difference between pinging and knocking? I know some folks (including me) use the terms interchangebly, though I have heard some talk about knocking as a mechanical noise when bearings are bad or other parts of the engine become "loose".

I am hoping to bring it to the dealer soon and see how they react, I'll keep you posted...

That's quite the shifting technique! I don't have any of those shifting issues. I agree that the revs don't fall as quickly as other cars I've driven, but I don't have to do anything special to shift. Nothing grinds and it's as smooth as can be.

I find 2nd gear is _EXTREMELY_ notchy, to the point where the shifter will usually bang when I shift into 2nd when the gearbox is cold. Once it is warm everything is fine.

The revs fall slowly for emissions reasons, I drove 5 or 6 different models of cars before buying my ET and experienced exactly the same slow-rev-falling issue in all of them (subaru impreza, toyota matrix, etc). Apparently it needs to burn off all of the injected gas before it will start letting the revs fall so sometimes they will even jump up a touch instead of just holding steady. I found it _REALLY_ annoying at first but I have grown to get used to it, I just have a bit of an issue when I turn the A/C on since then the revs fall immediately as I was used to before.

I don't think there is a difference between ping and knock however from what I said, I just meant that there is a knocking sound that sounds to me as if it is external to the engine, so I wanted to make sure I used a different term to emphasize the difference in sound :)

Well, I stopped by the dealer to see what they might say and got a bit of a run-around; wanted me to determine [I]exactly[I] when it pings and then try using high octane fuel. After that he would make an appointment.

So...

93 octane from BP seems to have eliminated the knocking, not that it makes me feel any better. I've got a better idea as to when it knocks, though its not a very specific behavior. Accelerating with the rpms around 1750 will do it though I swear I hear it much higher than that too.

I'll check back after I go to the dealer again...

It sounds like you are describing the second thing I listed. It is very audible at ~850RPM (so as the idle comes down as the engine warms up it will make the noise over a narrow temperature range), then again from ~1800-2200RPM then again at around 3100RPM. The last one is hard to hear as the engine gets quite noisy in that range as well. I thought it may be something to do with the variable intake system or the variable valve timing, but the near-idle knocking I get I can feel through the shifter and the floor boards and that just doesn't seem right.