I am no expert, but I know the knock detection he uses is the really expensive kind, where it's like you are using headphones. Maybe that's what you are talking about. He said that compared to the 8 and 9's, which apparently had great knock detection, the X uses something else that in his words would just not pull timing when knock occured. He said he only saw it pulling a degree of timing when he heard knock, especially up top where he was hearing a good amount of knock. He was making a good amount more power on my car, but backed it down because of the knock he heard. He is not a big fan of the X's knock detection.

His tag on here is DB performance, maybe he will chime in.

 

^^^I hope he chimes in. This is a huge development if it is true. Tuners have been saying that the Evo X loves timing advance. If DB is correct, then tuners who are advancing the timing are treading on thin ice.

 

I would not come to that conclusion right away. I have witnessed plenty of evo X's that knocked and you can see it in the graph right away. If a car knocks badly, it will show a nasty dip in the graph 99 out of a 100 times.

 

Yes, I use det cans. I had our Mustang tuner jump in and listen with a different det can setup and he heard the same knock at the same time as me. The X motor seems to knock pretty loud like a Subaru also, so it isn't hard to pick out or quiet like with a 4G63. Sometimes the factory ECU would hear it an pulling timing and sometimes it didn't do anything. But even when it would do something about it, it would just pull 1 degree and then put it right back in. I don't know if the strategy of the knock system on these cars it to rely more on a learned octane value and learn over time to run less timing, instead of just yanking a bunch out right away like it does on DSMs and Evo8/9s. The knock noise I am hearing is easy to make go away with less timing advance and I tune all kinds of cars that have no knock detection systems, so I am used to listening for knock with det cans.

It's easy to make all kinds of power on the X by adding timing, but with the knock I have heard on these cars, it is a bit scary.

 

Ok that would be inline with my experience on the 10's as well. Even when audibly hearing knock, it would only pull a degree or two most of the time.

However, like DG said above, you will for sure see it on the power curve if you know what to look for.

 

This is refreshing to hear from a tuner on here.

 

I emailed him to make sure he saw this.

Thanks for the comment Shane, I am sure people will appreciate it.

 

So as I said, tuners who are leaning out the car to 12:1 AFR, adding more boost AND more timing are playing with fire.

What I have always done when I tune is add boost, lean aout the AFR to 11.5-11:1 and then RETARD the timing from the stock levels. I followed the same process when tuning the 10 and kept an eye on the timing curve. In the areas where I saw a timing dip, I retarde the timing even more.

 

I am not sure why you would lean it out that much. When my car was on the dyno from what DB told me, it made absolutely no more power by leaning it out to 11.5 from 11:1, so I think he left it at 11:1. He said he could've kept it at 11.5:1 and it seems more people are running the X leaner but there was no benefit. So better safe than sorry.

 

Thats why its nice to have a logger that shows Knock Retard :-p

 

Only if you can trust the logger though and I don't have much faith in the X's factory knock detection so far to trust any logger only.

 

+1

 

Who is to say I am playing with fire as I take that statement as a direct jab to me. who is to say 11:5:1 makes more power. There is different tuning strategies. I never gave timing values for my tunes. I can say I am running 15-35 degrees upstairs and running 13:5:1 on 93 octane.

My average bolt on evo x will love to be in the 12.0 air fuel. 11.5 makes less power with my tuning strategies and tends to make my power under the curve suffer.I feel 110% safe with our fueling/timing/Mivec tuning. Hell I am not cocky but do own def. one of the lowest reading dynos in the usa and am averaging 75-100whp per minimal bolt on tune.

 

11:5:1 is the "known" air/fuel for a turbo car on pump gas. I think "outside" the box and allow these cars to run 12.0's

 

outside the block or outside the box?

I keed I keed.