I own a mostly stock Evo 8 with HKS cams that I'm wanting to use for a lot of track days and as such I need as safe of a map as possible. I run 93 octane and have set my AFRs to all be low 11s to high 10s in boost and have basically started the game of retard the timing wherever it knocks. But now this is starting to get ridiculous in the 3000-4500rpm range where I have been chasing most of the knock and my tables are starting to look pretty different from what other people get away with at higher boost and boy does the car fall on its face.
Now the first reaction is that its phantom knock but pulling timing has actually helped, I was seeing 4-5 and even sometimes 6 counts before in cooler temperatures while now I never go over 2. I suppose it's possible that I was getting real knock along with phantom knock simultaneously so I poured in a bottle of torco (no race gas pumps near me) in 5 gallons of 93 and end up knocking 3 and 4 counts, figures.
Is anyone else having to pull so much timing to get rid of knock? Now I'm having to worry about EGTs from all that negative timing and the ECU still wants to pull more.
Keep in mind my timing table isn't smoothed out because I'm getting kind of frustrated and just change the cells I need to and go.

 

I’d would recommend the basics. New plugs gapped at .018-.022. Compression /leak down test. Check for pipes hitting . Check physical timing. Check knock sensor torque value and/or replace .

Afr needs to be 11.2-11.5 on pump gas . 11.5-11.8 for race fuel. Too rich will be harder to ignite and could cause a misfire.
Engines need a certain amount of timing to run. These 4g63 engines with a small turbo usually like 0-3 degrees around 3500, 5-8@ 5500 and 12-14 @8000. Slow changes in timing .

Renting a hour on a chassis Dyno is money well spent imo. Adjust timing , knock filters and see how much it needs to run.

 

Went through my engine bay shaking on everything trying to find rattles, I did move my intercooler pipe farther away from the fan motor just in case. I pulled the spark plugs to take a look and they all looked normal, I had replaced them 4 months ago anyways. Then I went back to one of my earlier tunes that sits at 0 around the peak load area.
I had a good 3-4-5 pull with just a couple of 1 counts but at the time it was pulling a degree of timing on its own anyway in the mid range, I think I read somewhere that the ECU will pull timing if air temperature is high and its around 100...
But the second pull I did a couple of minutes later is posted below and looks way worse. At this point based on the conservativeness of the maps and my low boost settings I'm considering just tweaking the knock filters. My engine has higher miles so its quite possible my lifters are clanking up a storm.

 

I wouldn’t adjust the filters unless it was on a chassis Dyno and you can see the changes . You don’t want to cover up a potential problem by guessing . A spun bearing gets expensive.
Also, pump gas boost should be around 23-25psi . If you plan on running more then going with more octane or e85 may safeguard your investment .

 

At the moment I just want to run stock boost with no knock.
If the rod bearings were ticking and registering as knock wouldn't I have counts continuing well into the upper rpms?
Mechanically speaking the engine is fine, it just has some miles on it.

Here is the stock map, as you can see the knock occurs in the same vein
Except it was way faster back then because the factory timing is so high and can only be pulled so much...

 

He's saying not to play with the filters because you could be covering up real knock, which will hurt the bearings.

How many miles are on the spark plugs? Wear is function of miles on those, not time. And you're having weird knock, which could actually be mini-misfires so new plugs may help.

 

Less than 1000 miles