Hello,

My first post, and it's a problem/help-me post. Sorry.

I purchased a used 2001 Ram 1500 v8 4x4 auto. It seemed to test drive just fine and I liked everything about the truck. However, about 2 weeks later I started noticing this tinging noise coming from under the hood. Almost like if you were to take a stiff wire and bang the inside of a steel can somewhat. It almost never does it at low speeds.

I can reproduce the problem consistently by accelerating to about 55-60 (get the engine to shift to it's highest gear), and then pressing the gas almost as far as I can WITHOUT getting it to down shift. If I hold the gas part of the way down, it starts up and keeps doing it from about 1700-2100 RPM.

It doesn't do it at any regular rate either. When I get it to start up, it begins about about 1 every 1 or 2 seconds, and ramps up as much as 6-8 times per second if I keep the RPMs steady.

I've had a few other people in the vehicle and everyone has agreed that it doesn't sound like engine pinging. It sounds like it comes from the drivers side of the hood as well, but it's really difficult to pin point. My dad said it sounds like high voltage arcing. I'm in 2WD BTW. I've tried with and without the AC/heater/defroster/radio/lights/turn signals etc... doesn't change anything. It does it with a warm engine, it does it with a cold engine. I can put it in neutral and hold the engine at any RPM and it doesn't do it. I have to be in gear and moving.

Here's the bigger problem. I've taken it to the dealer 3 times (still under warantee). Every time they tell me they can't reproduce it. Everytime, I tell them "well yeah, you can't reproduce it in the shop. It's mainly a higher speed problem. I then tell them you have to take it to 55 or so and hold the RPMs at 1700-2000" (though it does happen at lower speeds when I'm accelerating sometimes around 2800 RPM).

I got frustrated and told them to take a ride with me. I took the mechanic about 15 minutes away from the dealer to get to a 50 MPH section of road and I let him hear the sound. He had this really puzzled look and had no idea what it was. He ended up faxing Dymler/Chrysler for answers. In the end, I'm not 100% sure what they did because I picked it up after all the mechanics had left. I remember him talking about carb cleaner. They didn't fix the problem because it ting'd on the way home. It was the heart of winter and snowing like mad, I was sick of the neon-rentals. So I've waited until now to bring it back in so I could drive my other non-snow-friendly vehicle.

I'm completely clueless about what it could be. My only guess is that it might be the auto-tranny, maybe it wants to downshift but it won't. ??? I really don't know.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what might be going on? Anything I can test? Or anything I can tell the dealer to get them to look into it further? It really becomes a problem at about 71-72 MPH on the highway because that's the RPM where it does it constantly and I either need to speed up past it or drop below it because the RPMs hang around 2000 there.

Has anyone heard anything like this before? I can try and get a sound clip of it, but I'm not sure if the background noise would drown out the real noise.

I'm not looking forward to bringing it back to the dealership.

 

did you double check that your spark plug wires are all seated properly? i dont know, just a suggestion

 

No, I have not checked that yet. I'll check that. Also gonna check the distributor cap to see if there are any char/burn marks (dunno if that's possible).

 

Can you get the noise to appear if you start to do a brake torque? One thing that comes to mind is the torque converter bolts. I had a Jeep Cherokee that made a similar noise under load like yours does. Turned out that the bolts holding the converter to the flywheel had loosened up and would rattle against the flywheel at certain RPM's. Doesn't quite sound like what you're describing, but may be worth looking into.

 

I tried a small brake torque last year and nothing happened. I don't think I've ever heard the noise in first gear. Every so often it will happen once or twice at around 40 MPH at 2800 RPM (happened today). I don't know what gear I was in, but I know it wasn't first.

The best way I could describe the noise would be to take an empty metal coffee can and take a pen and tap the inside of the can.

 

sure sounds like "ping", these engines like to ping at all rpm levels and under all different levels of load. I'd have your mech check the lower intake intake for vaccum leak(really easy), also run some combustion chanber cleaner through it. I'd also replace all the secondary ignition stuff, use whatever you want for the cap,rotor,wires, but use only Champion for the plugs. The correct plug number and gap are on the label underhood.

 

Can pinging be relatively quiet and quite high pitched? I have never heard what is considered a ping.

Combustion chamber cleaner - that's exactly what the mechanic at the dealership supposedly did (I quoted wrong in the original post). I'll definitely look into the secondary ignition stuff. As soon as the weather eases up some more I'll bring it in to the dealership and see what I can get them to do.

Thanks for the advice.

I know it's done it in the rain before, but tonight it was raining and I didn't hear any noise at all on the way home (about 20 mile ride). But I also wasn't putting the engine into the usual state where it would do it.

 

yes engine ping can change tne and get quite loud or be very light. Also look at the belt, they can make some noises and look at the engine mounts. If the engine moves in the mount the fan can contact the shroud and make wierd noises.

 

i don't know a whole lot about the rams, but i think i know the noise you're talking about and like he said before with the ping?? i have had old hot rods and fast cars all my life and when a car would ping (sounds like what you describe) i would check the gas you are putting into it?? i'm only trying to help but maybe you are using bad gas and it's not actually enough octane for the engine, i know some engines need more octane and without it, under a load, there will be a pinging noise!! try using a different gas station or using the higher octane for a tank and see if that helps....... like i said i just bought my ram and am just now getting some info on how they actually run so hope i helped ya maybe a little bit???

 

member 04GTX is right its a pinging noise that comes from under the hood when you accelerate. We have jeep cherokee with a 318 in it and it pings when you used a lower grade of octane gas. Switching to higher octane my cost you some but you will notice a difference in the pinging noise when accelerating