Car Repair - Rattle, Ping and Smoke What Does it Mean?

Your car, regardless of how old or well maintained it is, can make some scary noises or sounds that can leave you a little rattled with visions of high car repair bills dancing in your head. Take heart however, the most common problems aren’t always huge car repair bills to fix and if you have an overview on what can cause some of the most alarming noises your car makes, it might reassure you that the noises sound worse than they actually are.

Pinging noises can be alarming. It can sound like ball bearings are just flying around under the hood ready to fly out at any stop sign. Pinging noises or knocking can be caused by several things, including using the wrong grade of octane. This is the easiest car repair problem to correct since all you have to do is let your gas gauge go down to 1/8 of a tank and then refill with a higher grade of octane.

If the pinging or knocking noises continue there are at least three other possible root causes including carbon deposits in the cylinder, the ignition timer is off or the wrong spark plugs are in your car. At this point you will probably have to take your car in to your mechanic and have them look at which problem you have so the correct car repair can be done.

If your car is smoking from the exhaust there are again several possible reasons why you are suddenly burning oil including a leaky fuel injector, worn piston rings that will need to be replaced or something wrong with the PCV (positive crank case ventilation). If your car has a carburetor makes sure your choke isn’t stuck in the closed position. The easiest thing you can check yourself without any strong mechanical skills is the air filter. If it’s dirty and needs to be replaced this could solve it for you. If not, your mechanic can check your fuel injector along with everything else and get your car up and running again smoke and rattle free.

If your car is making rattling noises or ticking sounds you could have sludge in your engine. Sludge is the byproduct of dirty oil that has circulated through your car because the oil wasn’t changed properly and the oil filter wasn’t changed out. Old dirty oil is full of contaminments including road derby and once it works its way into your engine’s circulation system it can cause some serious problems including causing the engine to seize up.

Have your engine flushed and change the oil and oil filter and see if this fixes the problem. A rattling or ticking can also be caused by a valve that needs adjusting or push rods that need to be replaced.

Take care of these easy repairs now while they are still relatively cheap, and don’t ignore them until they become bigger repair bills than they need to be down the road.