I am doing a little tuning on my friends car. He has a built 2.3 motor. The first log of the car I did showed knock counts of 10 across the RPM range.

I think this is likely due to the "noise" of built motors, especially 2.3's The map is VERY conservative and he is running only 21 psi (stock turbo).

Here is the log, do you think this is real knock?

 

It *looks* like real knock to me, but I'm not entirely positive. Were I you, I'd try lowering the boost to 18psi on the same timing map that you ran here. Either that, or throw some high octane fuel in and see what happens. If either of these reduce/eliminate the knock, then it's real knock.

 

Pd1 hit it on the head. first thing to do is actually try to get rid of the knock. Make sure fuel is just on the rich side (not too rich since we know that can cause problems too), make sure the timing is conservative, and lower the boost. Perhaps even lower than 18 is possible.

If you can't actually get rid of the knock then chances are it isn't knock. Assuming there isn't something horribly wrong like massive carbon deposits, plugs that are way too hot.

Then you can start to consider it just a loud motor. At that point I know nothing. But I would feel uncomfortable tuning off knock by just ignoring the "baseline" knock counts you see and only worrying about knock above and beyond that. Would seem useful to have better knock filter values but I wonder if anyone has taken the time and expense to figure those out?

In either case, it might be worth talking to one of the shops (like the one who built it?) to see what THEY know about knock on a 2.3l.