I was talking to a buddy at work about my car's problems.

The basic problem is that with a tank of 91 octane gas from a
decent gas station, with a couple slugs of octane booster and with
the timing set to 0 degrees advance at idle my car pings somewhat
at no load at 2500 to 3000 RPMs.

This is clearly not a good thing.

He said "does your car lose coolant?" my answer was "a little"
He asked "have you ever overheated" my answer "it use to run really
hot and get into the red from time to time before I replaced the
t-stat and radiator and all the hoses" and he said "your pinging is
probably because you've blown your headgasket"

Is this possible? Can a blown gasket cause a car to ping? I'm
going to do a compression test first thing tomorrow. I've been
thinking of replacing the head and cleaning the carbon from the
pistons anyhow.

I'm just wondering how I can be pinging when the car (last time
I did a compression test) has no advance, 91+ octane, and the
best cylinder gets barely 135?
chris