My 5.3 with 20k recently began pinging pretty nasty upon hard acceleration (more so than the usual GM ping). Any ideas what a successful cure is? Truck is totally stock save for a Flowmaster exhaust. Many thanks for any ideas

 

Forgot to add that this particular truck runs a lot hotter than my previous 5.3's. This truck has run 210* (sometimes a bit higher) since new. I always order tow package for the coolers which has always seemed to help but not on this beast. What kind of water temps. are you fellow 5.3'ers registering?

 

Hi and welcome to the board. It sounds like you may have some bad gas or something. I'd maybe try some good injector cleaner such as Lucas (one of the best) and fill'er up with the good stuff and see if it goes away. Keep us informed.

 

I'm going to give it a shot of injector cleaner & premium & see if it is to any avail. I noticed you are running a 180* stat. How hard is it to swap out the stat on these 5.3's? Have you run into any computer problems by doing so?

 

The stats aren't hard to change but, you will lose alot of coolant in the process. It's best to drain the system down and then swap it out.

All you do is pull the hose off, undue the two bolts, remove the old stat and then reverse the procedure. Probably take all of an hour with draining and refilling the coolant.

You won't have any computer problems from just changing the stat. Maybe you got a bad one from the factory which is causing the high temps.

BTW, welcome to the site.

John

 

Just take your thermostat apart and drop a BB into the hole, then put it back together and it will run cooler. Once you get the Tstat apart you will know what I mean. It will save you 40 bux.

 

Before I go yanking out the stat, I have a few ?'s. Do these stat housings take a gasket or oring? What is the proper torque spec on the housing? Just don't want to end up with a bleeding stat housing! Thanks....