Can exhaust leak cause pinging

[AzFAL]

I think I may have a slight exhaust leak at the header on my front cylinder. Could this cause pinging? I seem to have always had a slight ping at hard roll-ons while twisting thru about 1/2-3/4 throttle. I get about 3-4 little pings and then its gone as I full throttle thru.

I'm basing this leak on it looking slightly discolored in one spot on the exhaust flange.

Any ideas?

[nessus]

An exhaust leak can sound exactly like pinging

[Jeffytune]

In theory........

If the leak is big enough to let outside air into the exhaust port, If your cam has enough overlap to suck in a bit of exhaust, thus leaning out the Air fuel ratio, then yes, it can cause a lean mixture and a detonation style ping.

Either way, it is best to fix it ASAP as it will through your tuning all to hell, fix it before you try and diagnose it any further.

[O'Rork]

Any exhaust leak can contibute a ping. The allowance of unchecked incoming atmoshere to the exhaust will allow excessive reversion/shock wave to traverse the entire path of mix all the way to the air cleaner and lean the mix.

A leak at the exhaust flange is worse. A single cylinder leak will cause a massive disturbance at said cylinder. The effect of the single cylinder disturbance will upset the flow of the companion cylinder a lesser amount. But, the out of balance of force on the recipricating assembly will stress the components more than a down stream/both cylinders affected, leak.

Any carbon/lamp black visable on the outside of the exhaust, except the rear opening of the muffler/collector is proof positive of a leak and requires immediate correction.