Issues Today
 

So today we go to get our boat (pretty dang heavy 23' Cobalt w/ tower and swim platform added) from the lake. Picture included below. As you can see this beast is pushing the limit of my truck a little bit. The water is way low in the lake so the ramp was a steep angle and I'm going to be honest. i didn't think it was going to get out of the water. Since I only have freaking 2wd I couldn't throw it into 4lo and give it the beans. I was worried I'd start slipping, but i finally and very slowly got it out of the water. But that's just my frustrated rant about the truck.
So we're going down the road. And the hills are fairly frequent and steep near Dadeville AL to Carrollton GA. I had it in tow haul/ or OD off as ford folks call it so it was in third. The truck started to knock, I thought the rear diff was about to grenade or the tranny was slipping third on some of the hills. My father thought it sounded like a bad injector. I could not get away from the noise from about 1700- 2300 RPM. It continued to get worse and I decided for grins i would throw it 4th. After that we had no issues for the rest of our trip. Just a tid bit confused by what happened and whether I caused any damage.
Was it bad fuel? what could cause this? The truck would shake, feel like it was losing power when it did this knocking sound/feeling.

The boat is way too big for your truck. I will gladly come take it off your hands for you....lol.:whistling2:

But anyways....no idea what was wrong.

What octane fuel are you using? It sounds like one of your knock sensors may be bad.

I was running from 87 Octane. I bought the fuel at a shell wednesday of this week. I am not from that area so I don't know how often it is used.
Thanks for the boat comment, we've kind of added things to try and make it do everything but haha I'll let you borrow it for the winter
After whatever ended up getting ran through or resolved itself it wasn't near as noticeable. But i really thought we were about to be stuck on the side of the road for about 20-30 minutes there.
I just filled up with 93 octane Marathon, at someone elses advice and coin. I don't really think higher octane fuel makes a bit of difference in my truck.

could it be the cam phasers? the truck sounds like the diesel I wish was in the engine bay
or the spark plugs going bad and maybe having one miss under a continuous heavy load?

Did you get a check engine light?

No CEL. only thing I did was alternate speeds and RPM's to try to isolate or avoid the problem in order to limp home. It continued to get worse and there was one really pronounced knock along with lots of smaller ones. Like I said i popped it into fourth, revs dropped a few hundred and no more problems. And the truck really had to WORK the whole trip, it doesn't like our boat too much...

oh the other things I forgot. I am running Valvoline Full synthetic 10w-30 or whatever stock calls for. I'm not due to change it for another 2000 miles but it has probably been close to six monthish. When the truck started doing this we thought we had a tire or something go bad so we pulled off to look things over. The exhaust was running really hot and my best description of how the exhaust smelled was like burnt gunpowder. I'm not exactly sure of the composition of today's smokeless powders but that is exactly what it smelled like coming out of the tailpipes. All my fluid levels were in acceptable ranges and the oil may have smelled a little like gunpowder but at that point I was trying to pinpoint. In short I have no idea what went on at all.

anyone?

I kindof think it may be a missfire problem. Its probably worth taking it to autozone and checking for codes. My check engine light flashed when I had a bad cop and then went off. So I think its worth a shot.

My first guess would be the cops. With that much of a load and the engine having to work that much harder put to much stress on a cop that is getting old.

okay I will have someone with a scanner run a test when I get the chance. It was in a really hilly area turning about +-2000 RPM for a repeated amount of time. all instruments were in the normal area.
so it could be the coil on plugs? does that mean I need to replace my plugs and coils?
thanks for the help

Well I would definitly expereiment with it and see if it does it without the boat before I put the money into all new coils and plugs because coils are 40 bucks a piece. It could be a lot of things and at 50k miles plugs should still be good but its still a possibility.

okay cool, cause I really don't want to have to fight with those dang plugs haha. we'll see if it happens again. I thought the smell was really odd

hey if i were you, at 50k miles, id change 'em now. seriously.

^^
yeah I've heard this from other folks too. I know with age they get even harder to do. I might be changing trucks here, but if not i probably should look into a plug change. stupid 2 piece design..

i did not see the boat..... but if is actually pretty heavy... it could be spark knocking from being to low rpm with the load... you may have to leave the tow haul on at all times.... my 08 just has a od button i wasnt aware these body style trucks had a tow haul.... either way... i would run some injector cleaner through it... and i would check out the COP's...and would def change the spark plugs