Audi Heal Thyself!

[David]

Has anybody else experienced a spontaneous healing? I'm going to risk angering the Audi Gods and tell you of my situation. Maybe it won't piss off the Audi Gods because I'm am singing their praise and praising my car? Hope so...anyway...

My CGT has had a problem with pinging since the day I bought it, or at least it sounded like pinging to me (others have suggested it could be distributor rattle). And I have been getting an intermitant CEL. It always goes away with a restart and the engine seemed to behave the exact same way with the light on or off.

I did everything I could think of short of taking it to  an Audi Dealer and/or screwing with the mixture (I have no experience doing mixture stuff on anything other than a SBC and you can set those by sound). No vacuum leaks, fresh tuneup, checked ignition timing , checked cam timing....

Well, she has healed herself. About 2 weeks ago the pinging just went away one day. It was just after having the leaking crank seal fixed. I took the car in for a timing belt job (along with WP, cam seal, roller, etc). Well, after the TB job I had a pretty decent oil leak. The shop ened up replacing the crank seal and filling in a chip on the oil pump where the seal goes in. Oil leak fixed. It was soon after this that I noticed that she wasn't pinging. Did it happen at the exact same time as the seal replacement? Not sure, but it was around the same time. Anyway, she's no longer pinging, and seems to have gained a significant amount of power. She running faster than ever before. Sort of like a scalded cat. But this actually worries me. As long as this isn't a sign of some huge major failure coming up...I'm sure not going to complain. Anybody got a clue why the pinging would siuddenly go away and the car feels so peppy?

Dave
2002 Jetta 1.8T (hers)
1993 RX-7 R1 (weekend play toy, soon to be for sale)
1987 CGT Special Build 2.3
in SE Virginia