Toyota Repair: Tacoma ping, combustion chambers, combustion chamber

Question
I have a 2000 Tacoma, V6 automatic with 85K. There are no codes in the computer. The check engine light is not on. The engine pings under slight acceleration and I feel a power loss as well. I have tried 3 different fuel stations, higher octane and fuel injector cleaner with no change. I was an ASE technician and would prefer to repair this myself. Any direction would be appreciated. Thanks for your assistance.

Answer
As a former technician you know as well as I do what causes pinging, in other words pre-igniton which can be caused by excessively high combustion chamber temperatures, a lean A/F mixture, compression ratios that are too high, overadvanced timing, the loss of power is caused by the knock sensor retarding the timing, in most cases if the knock sensor retards the timing as much as it can and the pinging is still there the check engine light will turn on but you say this is not the case so we'll have to look at other possibilities that can cause this without turning the check engine light on. Does the engine seem to run hotter than it should?  Could there be excessive carbon built up in the combustion chambers that would raise the compression, maybe the compression should be checked to see if it's much higher than normal. Let me know if I can help more.