I have never put anything but 87 octane in both of our p5's since day one...and never had it ping...That is the gas that is recommended for our motors...
we could get into a big debate about if higer octane does anything...but we will try to avoid that. Plain and simple higher octane gasolines are made for higher compression engines...it burns slower.
Your car is pinging because for the load you have it under...the RPM would LIKE to be higher....so don't shift into second on that grade untill your RPM would be higher than 3000 after you shift.
if your car didn't do this before.....and you have traveled these roads before and it didn't do it till now....I would say its the tank of gas you have now.....run through it....and fill up again with gas of the same type you normally use....do you normally ALWAYS get gas at the same station? if so...get it from somewhere else this next time...its possible that the station got a bad batch.....or even their tanks were getting low so it was pulling the trash off the bottom....even though the pumps have filters...they don't get everything.....
Make it a practice that if you see the station you normally get gas from has the tanker in there filling their tanks...wait a day or two before you get gas there....filling the tanks stirrs up all the garbage in there....give it time to settle.
There ya go...MY .02
(stash)
