Originally Posted by nash

Sunday I was driving around a residential neighborhood with the windows down and noticed rather loud engine pinging. The TCH was warmed up - I had driven about 10 miles. The temperature was only 70F and I have been using Shell gas for some time. Light pinging would not bother me, but this was bad. Normally I don't drive with the windows down, but it was a nice day and the ocean breeze was lovely.

I was going up a small hill, gently accelerating from a stop. As the car passed ~5 miles per hour the pinging started, and got rather bad by 10mph. Around 15 miles per hour it started to quite down. The engine rpm sounded just faster than an idle speed, but sounded like it was working - almost lugging. I tried the same hill a few times, and if I backed off the gas or accelerated faster, the pinging went away.

The TCH has 21,000 miles, and drives excellent. I'm thinking I may need to run some injector cleaner through the engine despite using good gas (mostly Shell and some Exxon) I'm going to try an re-create the pinging in a residential area near the dealer. If I can get it to ping consistently, I will have a Hybrid Tech from the Dealer ride along and see what they say.

Has anyone noticed any pinging on their TCH? I doubt I would have heard it with the windows up and radio playing...