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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 15:06:31 :
In Reply to: Re: Gas Additives posted by Ang [205.188.116.76] on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 14:36:27 :
It may well be that it's marginal regarding the quality of the gas. Could be a different blend at the pump this week, maybe more volatile fractions for winter driving. I even wonder if stale old gas might be LESS likely to knock than fresh gas, because it's less volatile. I don't see how the points could make any difference. Rather than "check the timing", I would suggest simply retarding the timing a bit and trying the same hill at the same speed.
The main thing when troubleshooting anything is to introduce as few variables as possible. If you "check the timing", you now have the possibility that the timing mark on the pulley isn't right, for whatever reason, or the pointer isn't right, or when you changed the points you altered the dwell, or your timing light isn't accurate, or any number of things. On the other hand, if, before you do anything else, you retard the timing and the ping goes away, you'll know for sure that you have a timing-related problem, but if you retard the timing and no matter how much you retard it, you can't get the ping to go away, you'll know it isn't really a spark knock (ping) and you won't waste time and money trying to work some magic into the timing or the fuel.
The key to troubleshooting is "divide and conquer". It's the scientific method. Devise an experiment that alters only one parameter, run the experiment, and see what results you get. The alternative is to shotgun it, which means randomly replacing and/or adjusting all the things that you think it could possibly be, in the hope that eventually you'll get lucky.
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