Pinking

[2litreturbo]

What can be done about pinking on a 2.0 turbo? I know the short term solutions like super unleaded fuel but there must be a cure for it. Is there?

[Stuart]

well if the LET has a knock sensor make sure thats working.


failing that new Plugs, Ht leads etc and also decoke the engine with redex or similar

[NovaNeil]

Retard the timing is how you useally stop it, but if your running the standard ECU you can't do that. Are you running a higher boost pressure than standard? If you are turn it down.

Water injection is a good cure for pinking.

Or fit a bigger intercooler to get your intake temperature down.

If it is Pinking badly, your engine will not last long!!!! :(

[novax]

Pinking is properly called detonation, or sometimes pre-detonation. As above your knock sensor should adapt the timing of your spark, and can even adapt the individual cylinders seperatly.

From Vaux-MD tech pages

The knock sensor is bolted to the block, and is there to monitor for the correction to the firing angle of each cylinder. The idea is quite simple, if the spark is to early as the piston is still rising it can ignite the fuel and stall the piston. This is an extreme case and wouldn't really happen, but in order to remove the smallest of timing errors it is possible to "listen" for the bang. Cylinders igniting to early resonate at a given frequency, this is what the ECU is looking for. It is so accurate that it can determine which cylinder it is and retard it's firing spark until it stops knocking. Having the spark set to ignite the fuel just before knocking would occur is the most optimum firing angle.

Trouble shooting
Knock sensors are know to cause problems if they fail, there is no way of repairing these so a new one must be fitted. It is vitally important that they are torqued up to the correct value.