<VV> strange engine sound (pinging?)

[Michael Kovacs]

Whistle noise... had one in my '65, traced it to rear bearing in the alternator. Cheeep fix. Yes, stepping gas will enrichen the mixture and also reduce vacuum advance to distributor, but you knew that.
 MIKE KOVACS 



----- Original Message ----
From: Ray R. (aka Grymm) <vairguy at echoes.net>
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
Sent: Wed, June 2, 2010 2:36:00 AM
Subject: <VV> strange engine sound (pinging?)

Hey guys, since you were talking about pinging I had a question for you...

Under load at medium throttle I get a rather quiet and subtle whistle/jingle bells noise...  It doesn't sound very much like pinging (which I'm very familiar with) but it's just close enough that it worried me for a bit...  the key thing here is that if I step down and give it considerably MORE throttle it goes away despite still being under a heavy load... from my experience pinging would get worse if I did that... but on the other hand maybe it richens it up enough to make the pinging stop? 

I've had Corvairs ping before.. I tried for a while to get a 110 auto to run on regular (unsuccessfully!) and heard plenty of pinging then.. this is different and subtler but I'm paranoid it could be a VERY light ping I guess.  In case you were wondering I did get the timing retarded far enough to run on regular without pinging.. but with the timing that far off my mileage went from about 20mpg to about 12... LOL!

The sound could also be belt or intake related... but it only does it under load when driving so its hard to track down.  It's a pretty low sound.... like hearing a salvation army guy from accross a parking lot at christmas time...  and it's so close to a whistle that I'm not sure it isn't one.  I might try to get a recording but it will be pretty tough to hear it over the rest of the noise.


Ray "Grymm" Rodriguez III
Lake Ariel, PA
CORSA member
66' Corsa 140/4 coupe
65' Corsa 140/4 coupe (under construction and almost done!)