Hello,
I recently bought a Mitsubishi Mirage (not sure what this would called in US, if available) - a 3 door hatch with a 1.5L 69kW engine, weighing about 990kg. It sounds to me like the car is pinging under quite a quite light loads. Examples - maintaining 50km/h in third climbing a gentle slope onto a freeway, accelerating from 80km/h in
4th at not faster then 2-3km/h/sec on flat. I've asked the dealer to look into this once, and they retarded the timing a bit (but still within spec) and suggested that perhaps the fuel might be under spec. Mirages (along with the Lancers, which are non-hatchback versions of same) don't have knock sensors so an occasional ping, or pinging under a heavy load (going up a steep hill in 4th at 30km/h, or trying to drag off a V8 from the lights) might be expected. But I don't think I'm doing anything that should cause pinging in the car. I'm never any where near flooring the accelerator. The pinging isn't loud - hard to hear if radio is on, or windows are up.I've was using premium unleaded (supposedly 94 RON - cars requires 91 RON), but in case it was the fuel I've been topping up with 98RON from a different service station. Am waiting for tank to empty so I can fill with 98RON from scratch, just in case. While it's possible the
94 RON wasn't really that, I'd think I had a bit of a buffer there, since the car only needs 91.But my question is - in a new car (shouldn't be any carbon buildup - now 2200km), should I be hearing pinging under the conditions similar to those above? I really don't think I should be stressing a 1.5 litre, but I haven't driven such a small engined car. Under what sort of conditions would pinging be normal? When I go back to the dealer I just want to be confident that there really is a problem.
Thanks, Neil