Found my boost leak. Supra IC was leaking where the plastic top tank attaches to the core. Hammered down the tabs and still had some small leaks....out come the grey silicone.

Damn cold idle knock is back today. When the weather is cool and the car is cold, I get a huge (up to 43) counts of knock, pulls all the timing and no power. Once the car warms up it's fine. Had this problem last year and never solved it, it just went away. Any sugestions??

Double check knock sensor and base timing?

Replaced the knock sensor last year, probably only have 3000 miles on it.
Base timing was just set at 5 degrees.

Crazy part is, I drove it for 2 weeks with no issues.

It's got to be phantom knock...I get up to 43 counts going down the road in a steady state. More when engine temp is cold, less (<18) and more intermitant when warm.

Isn't there a way of getting rid of phantom knock through EPROM programming? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere.

Yeah DSMLink allows you to ignore knock below a settable RPM or throttle position. Pretty sure you can set the same thing up by flashing a chip as well.

Calling Ncgalant.....come in Ncgalant....

Help a brother out!

First outing to Cordova Sat! Bracket Race #1
I went easy, since the motor only has about 250 miles on it and mainly wanted to shake the cobwebs out.

First run on street boost (17psi) and 112 in the tank:
12.817@107.7

Turn up the boost slightly 18 psi
12.639@108.6 w/1.71 60'
12.680@108.3 w/1.74 60'

For first round I dialed a 12.62
drilled the tree with a .008 light but I ran a 12.778@108.2 w/1.8 60'

Overall a good day, still have 2-4 psi left to play with so I'll see how she does next weekend.

NCgalant going to hook me up with another chip. I was getting phantom knock going down the road with 112 in the tank. I'm also getting some knock when on the stutterbox, and 0 knock at WOT.

Worse part of the weekend was a guy rolled a 9 sec car and had to be life flighted from the track. I was told that it looked like the crosswind got him and he didn't let off.

Good runs! Hate to hear about the wreck though. Hope the guy is alright. Was it pretty windy that day?

I always had a knock value in the 20's when sitting on the 2-step. Same scenario, knock on the box and none under wot. I paid no attention to the step knock, only the 3500+ wot knock. Race gas helped a ton, I set my boost where I wanted it, and tuned the timing from there until I saw around 7 counts at the top of third. I found that more timing (up to the knock threshold) made for better times than boosting until it knocked. ET and mph were better, and it just seemed to pull cleaner.

I didn't hear how the guy made out...probably find out next weekend.

The wind was bad, swirling, and probably 20 mph+. Would go from running down the track to a direct crosswind in the time it took to run down the track.

Report on the guy(s) that rolled, from the Cordova website

Unfortunately the raced was marred by two incidents as Gage Curry has his Jr Dragster rollover after a rear-end failure. Thankfully, he was not hurt in the incident. Also in round two of the Pro ET class, Rich Dawson lost control of this Camaro and smacked the wall. As a precaution he was taken by helicopter to a local hospital with bruising and a hand injury. He was scheduled to be released on Monday, May 5. "If there is any one thing that could be pointed out from these incidents is that the new safety wall did what it was intended to do" said Scott Gardner.

Since the car doesn't knock under boost I headed to the track for Bracket Race #2

Interesting day...

Shifter was acting funny with it hard to get into 5th and reverse last couple of days. I get to the track any do my normal underhood check and find a bolt a washer sitting on the tranny....hmmm, look around and the shifter bracket is barely held on by the other bolt. That explains that.

First run
12.814@106.29 at 17psi with a stiff head wind 10-20mph

Second run the car creeps through the beams when on the stutter so that wastes a run by the mph is 106.16.

I drive around the pits trying to get the car to do it again on the stutter, everything fine.
Third run, it starts creeping on the stutter, I catch it mash the throttle and run a 12.911 @ 105.65. Ugly launch and now I'm getting pissed.

Eliminations
I decide to dial high, to leave me room to screw up the launch and if it runs good I'll dump. So I dial a 12.99
I hook the brake with the side of my foot and mash the thottle. Works good except the unfamiliar foot brake situation cause me to relight -.077 so I run it out the other end to a 12.879 @105.88. That is pretty consitant with my first run. Wind was picking up so it killed my mph even more.

So now I need to figure out why it's rolling now. I noticed my clutch is engaging closer to the floor. It might not be disengaging enough and is grabbing slightly at the 5000 stutter rpm. So hopefully I just need to adjust the clutch pedal a little to get some more fork movement.

As far as the knock problem, got my normal knock driving down the interstate. No knock at the track except for the last run <13 on stutter. On the way home I got <6 counts all the way home until I turn down my street. I don't know, maybe the watered down 92/110 octane mix in the tank finally got down to a level to cause it to go back to it's old ways. Now I don't know whether it real knock or not.

Keep up the good work Chris. So far I Have found no miracle cures for knock. As others have mentioned, I have given up worrying about non-WOT knock.

Today I tried to eliminate my part throttle knock:

1. Welded up a intake pipe with a reciculating tube to get rid of my open BOV--no change

2. Double checked timing. With the engine warm, timing plug grounded and 750 rpm I couldn't get the logger to match what the timing light was telling me. The logger was stuck at 8 degrees and I had the timing mark about -5 degree BTDC. I talked to NCgalant and we think the CAS might be bad. I took it for a ride, at the part throttle knock was better but who knows what the timing is actually doing.

We both thought that the logger should lock out at 5 degrees with the timing plug grounded to allow you to set the crank timing correct to match 5 BTDC??? But on my logger it won't go below 8 degrees.

What does the timing supposed to read at idle with the timing plug UNgrounded? 10 degrees?

I started thinking (always a bad thing) and I had read on RRE Site on how to orient the CAS. According to this site it should look like this:

Mine was installed 180 according to this site. So I swapped it around. Idle was at 2000, let it warm up, rest the BISS to get 750. Reset the timing and this time it matched the logger pretty well at 4-7 degrees and took it for a ride. Crap a lot worse now, o2 sensor is cycling at .92-.94 (almost flatline), pig rich on the wideband 10.0:1 . Step on the throttle and it goes dead lean.

Now I'm confused as hell...I swapped in another o2 sensor (i thought it was good) and it cycled at .92-.94. I guess the 02 sensor could have died right after I swapped the CAS but that's a hell of a conicidence!

Would the CAS being 180 out cause the car to run pig rich and then lean at the blip of the throttle?

I thought a dead o2 sensor reads a constant .9XX with no change reguardless of the throttle position?

The way you show it is the way I install it with #1 cylinder on top dead center.

I'm going to try leaning of the MAFT to see if I can get the O2 sensor to start cycling. But i don't understand why it would jump to full lean with the hit of the throttle from pig rich....

Marcus, I pm'd you back.

I found out why the o2 sensor wouldn't cycle...the maf wasn't plugged in!! Sensor started cycling after that.

I had to pull 10% fuel from the idle and Mid knobs on the MAFT and got rid of the pig rich condition.

I swapped the old knock sensor (it was a Mitsu part) with a new Mitsu sensor.

Still knocking...better, but still knocking.....

I found posts on Tuners and DSMtalk about welding or jb welding the end of the knock sensor to make it less sensitive to phantom knock. Apparently 2g sensor have a solid end. Anybody tried this??

also, I checked the voltage at the harness and Chiltons says it should read 8 to 11 volts. Mine read 8.34. I wondering if the lower voltage makes it more subseptable to knock. Can any measure their voltage on a non knocking car to see if my theory holds weight??

Tried a few more things:
Swapped the pcv for a functioning one---no change
Reduced base timing to 0 degrees----slight reduction in knock


I may of found what my problem is.

All my knock is in the 2500-3000 range no matter what throttle position or load. I put the MAFT in RPM mode and added 4% more fuel at 3000 rpm last night and it cut the knock counts to <8 driving (at 0 timing) around my test loop out in the country. Bumped the timing up to 4 degrees and added 2% more fuel at 3000 and got <9 knock around the loop. Hmmm, so far so good.

This morning the knock was back, knock in the 30's So I added 4% more fuel at 3000 and had <6 knock in the next 20 min of driving. This morning was alot cooler, so i guess it ran leaner with the denser air.

God I hope this is it...I can't beleive it would be that sensitive in a certain RPM

sh$t....right back to where I was. Knocking like crazy, going up to 43 counts, pulling negative timing. Makes it tough to drive around town.

I even tried a older knock sensor with the hole in it jb welded to deafen it.

That's a bitch Chris. Been there and done that. tried everything known to man with short term successes.

Do you have a stock EPROM chip? At one time NC and I found that the timing map we had come up with for the stroker was modified enough that it increased knock as in your case and my exhaust housing would glow just from normal in town driving. Since NC is doing your chips, I doubt this is the case. However it's worth checking in case you've gone over that threshold in the tuning map, it made a world of difference for my newest engine. We basicly went back to the stock map's design and made more minor corrections vs. the entire custom maps like we had before.

Another thing to try is high octane fuel. Even though I don't put too much weight on non-WOT knock, I have been discouraged to find that high octane fuel brought down my knock count before we changed the tune. It blew away my theory that it was phantom knock in my particular case.

I don't have a stock chip...but I can put the stock ecu (non-eprom) in and re-adjust the MAFT to compensate for the 550 injectors. Thanks for the idea

NC, do you have a stock maps for the car to kind of start over? The car does go into open loop at the 3000 rpm mark by looking at the o2 trim going to 100, I don't know enough to know if that indicates anything.

I just checked and I didn't touch your maps other than the top 2 and above 6000. I'll put up the timing maps from your ecu here and the stock numbers in the next post.

here's the stock maps. All I've done is take away some of the timing between 3000-5500 to take away your WOT knock.

can't see the maps on my pda, have to look tomorrow when I have a computer to look at them. i'll probably swap the ecu just to rule out the eprom ecu being the problem, maybe the knock cirrcuit on the board took a crap. i'm grasping at straws.

them i'll yank the valve cover and look for lifters that are more compressed than the others. maybe it's a lifter banging around.

Nc...I may have you go higher in the knock maps to ignore it more...

You're going down a road that many have traveled, and most have sold their car to get off of. I like your lifter solution to try to find what is causing the knock. I can go higher for you. Looking at your maps, if we're only running 13 degrees in the bad zone, then I don't know how much damage we can do with that anyway. You must have been getting bad knock at the onset of boost a few years ago for me to have taken out that much.

I looked at the lifters and they visually look OK. None look to have bled down after sitting for the last three days. I'm going to order a set of the rised "3G" lifter from MAPerformance tomorrow.

NC, what does the gm/rev translate to? Some kind of mass air flow? I'm used to see psi... I guess what represents vacume and what is "in boost"

Edit Timing Maps This is the only map I've seen. It has a different map than yours (may be DSMlink's estimate), does the gm/rev translate into vacume/psi on this chart??

Yeah you took timing out when I was seeing knock on race gas, your timing adjustments took care of it then

its grams of air/rev. The top map represents aproximately 14psi

I swapped out the ecu for the stock non eprom. Set up the Maft for 550's. It looked better at first, but once I leaned out the mid knob enough to get the short term o2 trims out of the 80's it went back to random knocking. Tune was butt ugly, +35% fuel at idle, -20 fuel at mid, knock under WOT.

New lifters come in Thurs and hopefully that kills it...if not a new chip from Nathan going higher in the knock maps is the backup plan.

the timing on the stock maps is VERY agressive. You're only able to lean out your a/f so far on pump because I took out 6 degrees of timing around 4000-6000. I'm doubtfull about there being a tuning fix for this. On Marcus's stroker we tried more timing, less timing, more fuel, less fuel. It knocked all over no matter what.

I shut off closed loop and could just play with the A/F while driving. It knocked 43 counts cruising all the way from 20:1 A/F to 10:1 all on the wide band. Nothing helped.

God I hope I don't jinx myself....but
Just got back from Darryl's where we swapped in the new lifters, which was fun on a hot engine. After driving around for 20 min, the knock is totally under control. Drove the half hour home, and had a total of 8 counts of knock. So far so good!

NC did burn me a new chip to ignore knock below 3500 rpm just in case. I figure I'll keep an eye on it and probably have that removed in the next revision of the chip.

So I'm crossing my fingers until tomorrow!

Thanks again to Darryl and Nathan! It's nice to be able to DRIVE the car again!

Good job.

Had a big weekend of racing, went Friday for T&T and a little Trophy class and went back on Saturday for the Brackets.

First off the random knock is basically gone, so after all that swapping of parts it ended up being the lifters.

Friday night I ran about 7 or 8 times, I haven't cleaned the car out to finf all the timeslips. The times were unforntuantly all over the place from 12.8's to 13.7. The rich knock coming off the stutter was killing my timing at the beginning of the runs and then killing my 1/8 times. I started playing with the mid knob on the maft to lean out the fuel and it seemed to help. I did make it to the semi-finals and came in third in the Trophy class.

Saturday I decided to go back and run the Bracket class. After leaning out the fuel to help with knock coming off the stutter I ran:
12.92 @ 107.46
12.80 @106.93
12.99 @ 106.67

So I dialed a 12.9 for first round figuring it it ran good I could pedal at the top end. I ended up running a 12.88 @ 107.2 and breaking out. I ran it out because the guy was slightly a head pedaling me at the lights so I thought I ran slow. Looking at the slip the other guy got me at the tree with a .031 to my .122.... so I screwed up at the light big time. I did find out the guy I ran was a past divisional champ, so at least I got drilled by the best!

All in all not too bad for 18psi and 80's heat.

NC, is there anything we can do with the stutter/tuning setting to help make it more consitent with the amount of knock at the start? The slower runs were after >20 counts, faster when I only saw <13. Oh, I think I could use that additional timing at the top end that we talked about. I had zero knock(on race gas) once the intial first gear knock died down. Although I haven't turned the boost up to last years numbers yet (20-22psi)

Nothing really to speak about other than it's nice to be able to drive the car...been too busy fixing the DD Impala. Had a horrible whine, replaced a CV and put new brakes on it. But it looks to be trans related whitch could be big money to spend on a 01 with 140k. Friend of the wife is bring over a loaded 02 PT Cruiser with 33k Friday, could be my next car if the Impala repairs are cost prohibited. PT are kind of a chick car to me but we'll see.

Hitting the track in the Talon for the brackets Saturday for some more abuse. Need to concentrate on my reaction times.

Worst part is that the PT will get worse milage than your impalla. I've driven two of them both owned by work. They are pretty consistent at 26hiway/22city. Pretty crap that way

I forgot you drove them...any other mechanical issues? My Impala only get 22-25...but your right, I expected better.

Got a couple of trips to the track to update

6/28 Bracket #6
Got a new personal best of 12.43 @ 109.94
The rest of the runs has a terrible bog on the launch with 2.0xx 60's
12.85@109.99
13.04@109.74
First round dialed a 12.85, redlit and ran it out to a 12.69@109.22 after screwing myself staging. Thought i rolled through the beams, back up, staged again...

I tried everything to eliminate the bog and knock coming up on the stutter. Hard and soft dry hops didn't seem to matter, coming up on the stutter a couple times before staging seems to help clean up the rich knock cause by the stutter.

7/12 Bracket #7
13.00@108.44
12.97@108.11
13.245@107.13
All 3 rounds had a bad bog on launch, one accountable to alot a knock on the stutterbox pulling all the timing.
First round dialed a 13.2, planned to dump if it launched. But I redlit again and ran it out to a 12.55@107.77 with a 1.70 60'! My best to date. So that really looked good, redlighting by .05 and then running .7 under my dial...dumba$$!

I think I finally figured out the bog on launch. The last run I made an effort to purposely slip the clutch and it 1.7'd. So I'm thinking in an effort to get better lights I'm popping the clutch and bogging the motor.

Next race is 7/26. Worse part is that I've not gotten past the first round in 6 races and have less point than last year when I only ran 4 or 5.

I'd like to annouce the latest addition to the SOB Racing Team....my wife!!

She made her first passes (3) down the strip last Friday. Her third run was clean, 15.5x @ 103 with a 2.8x 60'. She was leaving normally (like a stoplight), I didn't think she was ready for the stutterbox launch! My clutch took some abuse since she hasn't run a stick in about 2 years but it was worth it to see the adreneline look in her eyes!

She was pretty pumped as was I...she now understands my addiction.

I made only four runs since I was trying to get her on the track, all in the 12's with a best of 12.54. Last run I made was a hail mary, crank the boost run. I ran out of fuel (13.5:1) and picked up some knock in third and forth....oh well. I had the MAFT WOT adjustment out at +35% but I didn't feel like adjusting the base setting to get some more fuel.

Tell your wife I'll race her next time in the girlfriend's Grand Am LOL

Awesome Chris. Good to get the family involved more.

Was this last Friday night when all the Daxcon guys went to Cordova?

If so, how did everybody do?

You got a race Turbo...I predict low 14's for her next outing!

Yeah Kicks, we had about 12 people come out to race plus some wifes took some runs. Everything from two 9 sec cars pulling wheelies (a red Formula and Drwizrd's on CSS purple Mustang), couple crotch rockets, an early big block vette, late model Caddy, Crown Vic, Focus, family mini-van and a few others. Was a interesting pit scene... Not all cars are earth shattering, but everybody was competiting in their own speed range.

Most importantly, everyone drove home in one piece....a race occurance for our little DAXCON outing! Somebody usally breaks something.

Hey, atleast you got somebody else into the sport. Mine won't even ride along down the strip, but she does really enjoy watching from the bleachers. I guess it's a start. Good job Chris

Finally some progress to report!

I now have some more agressive chips, thanks to NCgalants hard work. After a couple hours of fiddling we got the 512 chips to work in my ECU. I now have some base chips to make up for the WOT lean condition so I can turn up the boost past 20 psi. I also have a chip with increased stutterbox rpm (5800) to help launch it. And finally a Race Gas Only chip with a more agressive timing map at WOT. I put some drive time on the pump gas chip and it looks pretty good.

I also had time to look at some video of my last outing, the rear suspension is still squatting 3-4 inches so I'll try stiffening the shocks next time out to lower the 60'.

Thanks again NC for the time and driving out "to the country". Next time I'll try to have a decent beer in the house...or you can try the wife's vodka lemonade, a couple of those will get your world right!

Next outing is next Sat!

sounds good keep us posted.

Pretty decent outing for 19 psi. Ran a 5800 stutter that seemed to help launch, alll run had a consitent 1.7x 60' NCgalant's tuning helps out again!
12.588@108.8 on the first run with the chip adding more fuel
12.56@109.09 on second run with 20-21 degrees of WOT timing
12.463@109.52 on third with some more WOT fuel on MAFT

First round, driver was an idiot and did everthing wrong...I need a new driver Figure's this is the most consitent the car has EVER been! I was going to try to buy back in to get another chance of going rounds,

I think I may have a wideband sensor going bad...first run had a 12.5:1 which is what I like. Next three run the wideband ran 13.4 even with the MAFT adjusted 7 more clicks rich at WOT. Even the drive home under accel the wideband would only read 13.4

Anybody had any experience with wideband sensor starting to die??? I read that they usally read lean when they croak but this one still ocillates around stoich going down the road. This ones got about 2 yrs of racing with leaded 110-112 in the tank. I hate to replace a $90 sensor and not have it be bad.

Seeing any knock on the runs with the extra timing? If not, I say we add some more. If we can keep running 12.5:1 and add another couple degrees of timing you may have some more in it. Overall I'd have to guess you're still around the best a 14b can do. Glad to hear she's pulling well and still holding together

I didn't get a log of the third run (12.46) The last run showed <13 off the stutter and <3 in third....but I missed that gear so it probably cause the knock hit.

I never got a chance to turn up the boost since the wideband reading were showing lean. But I'm not sure that was accurate now...

It look like you've picked up almost 1mph over your last chip. I'd be interested to see what your actual A/F is after you get the bugs worked out of the sensor. We may need to bump the 1600hz+ multiplier up another notch.

I just realized how close you are getting to my 111 I ran in the galant. Another couple of chips and a cool day and you may get there. That being said, you're probably making over 300hp at the tires. I just did the calculation. It says you are making 334hp

Ordered a new bosch Wideband sensor today, hopefully that's the problem. I did check the downpipe gasket in case it was leaking air into the exhaust....it wasn't.

334 hp sounds pretty good!