What is up with the 5.2/318 in Ram???

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Yesterday I took my Momma out to eat for diner. When I was coming home I took a back road up a very steep hill. Motor was pinging up a storm which I never heard before. Checked the oil today and made sure all the spark plug wires were attached correctly, which oil level was full & plug wires all clasped tightly. There I noticed my overflow tank for the radiator was almost empty?? Climbed underneath and did not see any coolant present on the truck or ground. I took it for another ride today after work up some hills with hard acceleration and no pinging present. Just wandering for the all of a sudden pinging and antifreeze loss out of nowhere? Note -- truck has 74 thousand orginal miles on it.
 
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My son has a 2013 Jeep Cherokee with 22K and it told me yesterday it's using coolant,(overflow tank was empty) but not leaking. What's with these Chrysler engines?
 
I can't speak for the coolant loss, maybe it is because of using the heater now that cold weather is here. You could add coolant/water mix to the overflow to bring it back to normal level and keep an eye on it. My own overflow did the same thing last week, I have no leaks or other problems but I had to top off the overflow. I figured it is because I have some coolant in my heater core from using the heat the other day.

The pinging is a very common problem on the Magnum engines. It is from carbon building up in the combustion chambers and on the piston tops. You can have a shop do an induction/intake cleaning service like BG or Everwear, it may help some, then use Regane every 3000 miles to help keep things clean. You can also put in a set of Autolite 3923 plugs, they are one heat range colder than stock and can help with pinging. Use the Echlin cap and rotor from Napa, the ones with brass contacts to help get better spark and a little more voltage to the plugs. You may not want to do it but you can also put in a 180 degree thermostat which will trick the PCM into thinking the engine is not fully warmed up to normal operating temperature. The PCM will then advance the timing just a little. 3923's and a 180 thermostat will stop the engine from pinging but the lower thermostat can cause a little lower MPG. I have had a 180 on my truck for about six years now and have never really noticed any detrimental effect on MPG but it may be different on a V8.

One other thing you can do is take the truck to the Dodge dealer and they can re-flash the PCM so it will retard the timing by 4 degrees. That was Dodge's "fix" for the pinging problem and it does not really work. All it does is take away some power. It can turn a good engine into a real pig, and once the flash is done it can not be reversed. The PCM flash is known as the "Death Flash" in the Dodge community and is not recommended. You can Google the pinging problem or check on DodgeForum.com for a lot more info on it.
 
Originally Posted By: tig1
My son has a 2013 Jeep Cherokee with 22K and it told me yesterday it's using coolant,(overflow tank was empty) but not leaking. What's with these Chrysler engines?


Which engine?
My 300's Pentastar over the 1yr/41k My dad's had it needed ~1qt top up.
Cap's uber rusty too.
 
I do no know about the sudden coolant loss but these trucks are well known for the pinging. I know all the items listed above will likely fix the pinging, but If I recall the overall fix for the pinging is to replace the plenum gasket under the intake manifold?:
 
The plenum gasket is a biggy in the Magnum engines. The big thing being that you have a steel plate on the bottom of an aluminum keg-style intake. I also heard that the bolts that were originally used to put the plate on were just a bit too long, thus contributing to the problem. Hughes Engines has the whole fix, complete with gasket kit, aluminum plenum plate, and hardware for something like 120 bucks; it can also be found on eBay as well, the plate only though I believe. Fix it once, never worry about it again. On another note about that as well, this was also a big contributor to oil consumption, plug-fouling, and clogging of the catalytic converter. Dodge Forum is good for a lot of things
smile.gif
 
Here is a video of someone checking for a blown plenum gasket using a vacuum gauge:

How to tell if your plenum pan gasket is blown

I have heard that you can also take the air intake hose off of the throttle body, hold the throttle open and shine a flashlight in to see if there is any oil inside the intake manifold (a telltale sign of a blown plenum gasket.)

Here is the upgraded kit that is supposed to be a permanent fix:

Hughes plenum gasket kit

Hopefully you will find the root cause of the pinging (if the pinging returns) without too much trouble.

If it loses coolant like that again, you might want to pressure test the cooling system.

Andrew S.
 
There are 2 things that are common failiures on the magnum 318 that sits in dodge and jeep.
First one is the plenum that fails because of that the factory used an aluminiumintake and a steelplate as the plenumplate and the gaskets sits between those 2.
Every engineer should know that those 2 materials expand and contract at completley different temps and destroying the gasket over time.
But apparently the one in charge of making the intake missed that class...

The second is that the heads can crack between the valves.
Loosing water is the symptom of that, it can go in to the cylinder or down to the oilpan.
If it goes in the cylinder you will have white smoke out from the exhaust and sometimes the compression goes in to the coolingsystem and making it bubble in the overflowtank or blow out hoses.
 
It is a good idea to check for a bad belly pan gasket but if OP had a bad gasket he would also have a significant loss of power and also a sudden high increase in oil consumption. OP can also check the belly pan gasket with a vacuum test. I believe I read somewhere online that Dodge corrected the belly pan problems some time around the 2000 model year but I don't remember much of the details.
 
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