Pinging?

N

newprot5fan

Member
Hey all,

I know there have been threads on this topic before, but everyone seems to have a different perspective, so I am just wondering if a consensus has been reached...

I put the long reach spark plugs in my '02 manual P5 and have been running 89 octane ever since. This tank however, I put 87 octane in. So far so good. But I am just wondering if it is unwise to do so and if it is better to stick with the 89 octane with the longer reach plugs. (I did the switch due to the fact gas is so bloody expensive!)

Thanks
Dave
 
newprot5fan said:
Hey all,

I know there have been threads on this topic before, but everyone seems to have a different perspective, so I am just wondering if a consensus has been reached...

I put the long reach spark plugs in my '02 manual P5 and have been running 89 octane ever since. This tank however, I put 87 octane in. So far so good. But I am just wondering if it is unwise to do so and if it is better to stick with the 89 octane with the longer reach plugs. (I did the switch due to the fact gas is so bloody expensive!)

Thanks
Dave
Click to expand...

P5's were designed to run on 87 octane gas. Why would long reach plugs require you to run higher octane gas?
 
5PADZAM said:
P5's were designed to run on 87 octane gas. Why would long reach plugs require you to run higher octane gas?
Click to expand...


THat answer is beyond my knowledge, but I do know that a way to stop engine pinging is to use a higher octane gas......the longer reach plugs throws off ignition timing or something like that...

Is the resulting PING loud or soft..I heard a single ping today, but have no idea what it was (wasn't very loud)..
 
newprot5fan said:
THat answer is beyond my knowledge, but I do know that a way to stop engine pinging is to use a higher octane gas......the longer reach plugs throws off ignition timing or something like that...

Is the resulting PING loud or soft..I heard a single ping today, but have no idea what it was (wasn't very loud)..
Click to expand...

pinging sounds like a soup can with a pebble bouncing around in it. I think, being that you are in canada, you should not have any detonation problems with 87 octane and long reach plugs. The only people that are going to have any problems are folks like me who live in hot climates. I went with colder long reach plugs for this reason and Ive had no problems. In a cold climate you might experience some fouling with the colder plugs though.
 
Last edited:
qualityrockola said:
pinging sounds like a soup can with a pebble bouncing around in it. I think, being that you are in canada, you should not have any detonation problems with 87 octane and long reach plugs. The only people that are going to have any problems are folks like me who live in hot climates. I went with colder long reach plugs for this reason and Ive had no problems. In a cold climate you might experience some fouling with the colder plugs though.
Click to expand...

I thought that noise was something else other than pinging....From what I have read, some people have described a single PING at certain speeds...I thought I heard a PING pulling into my driveway the day after I put 87 octane in the car...I certainly don't want to cause any engine damage to my car...

Wil it be fine with 87 in it for this tank? I think I will go back up to 89 after it is done, (or put in 91 half way through to get technically 89 )
 
I know the pinging you're talking about. My Miata was designed for 87, but it would ping under load at low rpms unless I used 88 or higher. Some people claim it's bad for the cats to run higher octane fuel, but I never had any problem over the 68K miles I had the car running 88 or 89.

Now that I have a P5 I run the long reach plugs, which indeed have advantages over the stock size plugs (jeg), and the car runs fine on 87. I ran 89 also and only noticed nominally better mileage, not worth the additional cost overhead.

If you don't ping on 89, and everything else is fine, I say forget about it.
 
I ran the long reach plugs for like a year, didn't notice any definite pinging, but when I switched back to stock plugs recently, the car was way smoother.
 
Interesting. Yours is the first account of less smoothness with the long plugs that I've seen. How many miles on the old long ones?
 
JoshP5 said:
Now that I have a P5 I run the long reach plugs, which indeed have advantages over the stock size plugs (jeg), and the car runs fine on 87.
Click to expand...

What advantages do long reach plugs have?
 
JoshP5 said:
I know the pinging you're talking about. My Miata was designed for 87, but it would ping under load at low rpms unless I used 88 or higher. Some people claim it's bad for the cats to run higher octane fuel, but I never had any problem over the 68K miles I had the car running 88 or 89.

Now that I have a P5 I run the long reach plugs, which indeed have advantages over the stock size plugs (jeg), and the car runs fine on 87. I ran 89 also and only noticed nominally better mileage, not worth the additional cost overhead.

If you don't ping on 89, and everything else is fine, I say forget about it.
Click to expand...

SO you don't get any pinging with 87 octane. Like I said, I never got pinging with 89 (at least I didn't think I did), but although it does seem smoother with these plugs, people are saying you shouldn't put 89 octane ina car designed for 87..and since I am getting some pinging at 87, I will have to go back to 89......

Maybe I should just put the stock plugs back in....the last thing I want to do is screw up my engine due to pinging since I hear it is NOT good for the engine...
 
JoshP5 said:
Interesting. Yours is the first account of less smoothness with the long plugs that I've seen. How many miles on the old long ones?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how many miles, but it should be under 10k, as I don't have too long a commute.

When I first put them in, they felt pretty good. But recently when I took it out, I could feel a pretty big difference in smoothness. There's definitely less power, and less low end torque with the stock plugs, but the engine makes less noise and there's just a smooth feel that's hard to explain.
 
That wasn't random at all.... you weren't even CLOSE to the thread topic! lol :p

It's governed by the fact that it's only got about 95 WHP to push through the air at 140-ish.
 
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