i almost positive your plenum gasket is blown with that many mile on your engine,i just replaced mine and i gotta tell ya,its a very poor design from dodge,the reason you get pinging is because its basically a huge vaccum leak causing a lean condition in the engine..

 

I'm thinking if I did it would of happened long ago, and the previous owner took good care of the engine, so maybe it has already happened and been repaired lol, for now I'll keep an eye on my oil level until 3,000 miles, I'm starting to pick my MPG back up, and it really doesn't seem like it's lost power or chugs along horribly, in fact the power alone seemed to increase after I tuned it up last week, and honestly I don't know what kind of sound it is, I'm trying not to worry much about it atm, and will just keep an eye on the things affected by a bad plenum gasket, I only bought the truck for $1500 and have put about $2500 into it cosmetically and some repairs, and I am much of a novice to replace the gasket myself and don't have the $800+ to get a mechanic to fix it.

 

looking down the tb doesn't really do anything for you, ya there may be oil in there because of bad plenum but there will prob be some even if the plenum if fine, it gets drawn in by the pcv, better to take a long magnet and see if it sticks to the bottom, if it does you have the stock plate

 

I don't know if this could bee good sign, but I just took the old spark plugs I replaced, out of storage, as I saved them, they have wear for spark plugs but they all look completely fine where they fire, I looked for any signs of both oil build up and carbon build up or any type of build up from this picture: http://forums.themustangsource.com/a...4100345224.jpg, and they all look like the normal condition, I'd say the plugs easily had at least maybe 8k miles on them

Here's a pic of the old ones:

Besides wear I don't see any sign of a spark plug going bad lol.

In the end I am just going to keep an eye on my oil consumption, among other things, I would assume that with 230k miles on the truck the plenum would of blown at least 100k miles ago, and from both the condition of the truck and it's engine, I am assuming for the most part that maybe the previous owner had this issue fixed, the truck and engine is in great shape for 14 years old and 230k miles.

Besides the really dark oil being 2 quarts low in a truck with 230k miles on it before I changed it (6 months after I got it, should of changed it sooner), I will just monitor my oil levels weekly and go from there, the old spark plugs in the truck looked in great condition with no signs of any type of fouling from carbon build up, or anything the latter. I am not sure I really hear a ping per say, it may just be me being overly paranoid at the engine reving up on RPM's, I tend to err on the worst side instead of the better side of caution, so I worry a lot.

My truck handles hill's really well, and doesn't seem to have any loss of power, as a matter of fact after changing oil, plugs, wires, rotor and distributor, battery, it seems my truck is running better than it was when I got it 6 months ago (I'm strapped for cash so some of these maintenance things took me a bit to take care of).

And it also seems that my MPG is starting to pick back up at least according to the HUD information, I have never monitored it in real time, I may try that, but atm it's reading at 11.7MPG for winter gas.

I will err on the side of caution, but for now I am going to just keep an eye on things.