Engine is pinging a lot under load (climbing hill). At the garage they replaced the air intake rubber hose since it was leaking but this didn't fix the pinging. They also found the middle muffler is bad (rusted and broken inside). The mechanic suggested to try a can of BG-k44, but I doubt it will fix the heavy pinging. Could the pinging be related to the bad muffler? If not, what other things should I check? Thanks.
More likely the pinging is caused by carbon buildup, in which case BG
44K is not a bad idea but you probably would need something stronger, like GM Top Engine Cleaner.good luck
nate
Your answer is Yes, a muffler stopped up from being broken apart inside, if its pieces cause an undue restriction to exhaust flow, can exert a load on the engine & cause pinging. Also a stopped up cat. convertor or a collapsed inner wall of a 2-wall exhaust or tail pipe can do the same. Usually when the cat. convertor becomes clogged from contaminated 'honeycomb' or 'pellets', or the pipe is stopped up from collapsing, you hear a 'whooshing' noise when you attempt to accelerate. You DO know what a whooshing noise is, don't you? (Hopefully it's not just a colloquial- ism.) HTH, s.
There is indeed a noise when accelerating, not exactly whooshing, more like metal parts rattling aginst each other. That's probably the pieces of broken muffler moving inside. And I forgot to mention, MPG is down as well.
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