If you made no other changes but were suddenly able to add 3-4 degrees despite 40-50 degree hotter temps, then I guess it is as something is clearly much better now. I am a bit surprised to hear it would do that unless the guts were collapsing and blocking flow. How'd it look inside?

'Normal' is tough to say as every car is a bit different, location, local gas octane, etc all play a factor. That's complicated more by adding mods as the variability increases even more.

Generalizing, I still think that timing is low assuming you're still on the 3.4". You've got a pretty healthy amount of supporting mods to be struggling this much with it. But I do think you're now at the point where you certainly could just be on the far unlucky end of the spectrum of normal as some cars seem to be more knock prone than others.

One things for sure, it's still much lower than ideal.

 

I didn't ask to see it as I had a shop do it, although I think its possible the louvers were creating more restriction than one would think. Chopping it out and plopping in a Vibrant resonator was the only change I made so it clearly was restricting.

What would be my next step in that case? I don't really have any other ideas as to what could be causing excess knock. I will say though, I have been noticing a troublesome spot in my High Octane table that I am almost sure is false knock. Here is a picture showing the region I mean



That area corresponds with cruising and climbing a hill or slowly accelerating. I've noticed that if I climb a hill and push the car jusssstttt hard enough where it doesn't downshift into 3rd but my Cyl Airmass goes up higher then I get some knock readings. When I tested this all yesterday, I bumped the whole table up 3° before heading out. The only place I saw knock was that region, a few of those cells had 3-4° of retard. I subtracted that amount from the table, but after driving it again I still had a couple degrees in those same cells. To me, that sounds like false knock as subtracting the cells with knock a second time would bring the timing there down to like 6-7° (the picture is after I said screw it that has to be wrong and added timing there despite reading knock), which surely can't be right considering I can push 12-13° WOT, right? If these cells are experiencing false knock, is it possible that I am seeing wrong knock readings WOT too? Maybe a sensor is getting bad (the car does have 170k miles at this point), or maybe its too sensitive and picks up readings too easily? If you don't think that's the case, what else should I be checking as a source of this problem? I've been on a 3.4" pulley ever since I did my headers and 1.9:1 rockers. Since then I have got the N* TB and the ported blower.

 

How are your lock/unlock settings for the TCC converter set up? That area looks like it is hovering around wanting to unlock but not quite doing it. Trans tuning can be just as important as your timing sometimes

 

Honestly I haven't tuned the transmission, I don't know much about it and given these transmissions and the age I'm a bit afraid of doing so. I never flashed the stock ROM, so the transmission should still be set up as the canned tune from overkill. Are you wanting these tables? The TPS in my log where this happens is right around 24%

 

Yeah, that's where I was talking about. Here is how mine is set up (although I think I'm a different gear ratio than you).

But it doesn't hurt to try a change here, and see if the KR goes away. If it doesn't, you can go back to what you had before. No harm, no foul.

Also is my part throttle shift table just in case. The trans might just need to be dialed in for you, look up a few guides on getting it to work right.

 

So do you mean the issue could be I'm not unlocking soon enough (as in too high of TPS) and its putting a lot of load on the engine when I climb a hill?

 

Yeah, since you are suspecting false knock, it could be that the transmission is acting funky and bogging you down.

 

I don't know anyone else's opinion on it, but I just want to throw an option out there that I recently started using, and tuning for. I started running Boostane, jumping 93 pump gas to 100 octane. On my NA motor, I can run anywhere from 25-30* of timing at WOT with this stuff and no knock. Whereas with just 93, I'd get a few degrees of knock at 25* of timing. A side note though, I run copper plugs, and change them every 3-4 thousand miles. So I'm not worried too much about the orange buildup from running the octane booster. I would not advise running this stuff with iridium plugs that you keep in the engine for long periods of time.

 

Thanks for the info. That reminds me, I should also note that I can only get 91 here

 

Waste of money IMO. Bumping octane that much probably takes half a bottle. So you're adding $10-15 to every fill up. Over the course of the life of the car, thatll add up to thousands. The OP is way better off putting that into legitimate mods rather than a bandaid.

Octane booster is also risky. If you've tuned it for the extra octane and either run out or forget to put it in one time, you risk blowing the engine. I also always wonder about mix consistency with stuff like that.


IMO is more octane is desired, E85 or meth injection is the way to go.


Assuming you're talking a 3800 - why are you running 100 octane on a low compression NA engine designed for 87?

Theres also no reason to be going up to 30 degrees of WOT timing, I've never seen any evidence of power gains anywhere near that high on a 3800.