As I continue to test various ECUs I surely enjoy exploring their features, capabilities and limitations. So far I've created countless tunes for my car with the Greddy E-Manage Ultimate, have one year of AEM Infinity experience and also had some limited exposure to Hondata. All of this is done on my personal Honda S2000 which is a daily and a test mule for mentioned ECUs. My next victim is a Haltech ELITE however I am really looking forward to testing the MOTEC one day.

I can say with confidence that Greddy eManage (piggyback) and AEM Infinity (standalone) requires you to dedicate some serious time and effort into actually being good at what you do. On the other hand the Hondata and other flash alternatives alike are very forgiving and much easier to deal with.

This month's goal was to test over the counter octane booster. I had blindly selected Royal Purple MAX-BOOST which claims 3 point increase over your current octane rating, in my case that's 93+3=96. Results shown below display knock sensor raw voltage plot and the knock floor set/configured by me. This was developed using knock audio detection, second harmonic frequency on the knock sensor instead of the 1st harmonic and my chosen filtration settings.

Again, bottom plot of each octane run displays how chatty each cylinder is, take a look at how knock activity calms down with higher octane and avoids onset of light knock and abnormal combustion.

2004 Honda S2000 (AEM Infinity) and Supercharger belt disconnected to mimic naturally aspirated cylinder pressures:


Pretty big difference and a good way to rule out any phantom knock.

I'd like to add that this method will NOT rule out mechanical knock that the knock sensor is picking up. So say your motor mounts are worn or if your turbo manifold/supercharger makes contact with chassis.

 

Very cool! Im in the process of tuning my car on flashpro and was thinking about trying this exact thing with VP Octanium ( claims a 8 point increase). Im also curious how much further I could advance the timing over my local 91 pump gas.

 

Hey @ECaz34 ,

A few recommendations if you're tuning yourself:
1. Do not desensitize the knock frequency in the FlashPro Manager tuning software. You'll have quite a few folks disagree with me, maybe even suggest to disable the knock sensor. I ignore all that noise and advise against it, I like safe tunes .
2. For NA, if you see a lot of knock activity or spikes with Hondata's or your personal base conservative tune, try to stay well below 27 degrees by 8K rpm. I stay below 25, I still see a spike here and there with different 93 octane variances.
3. With FI you'll end up at least 10 degrees lower values than mentioned above, but obviously that'll depend on boost, SC vs Turbo, octane and what RPM you're at. There are many variables.
3. If I were you and I was on 91 Octane, I would keep it around 20-22 degrees by 8K RPM on 91 Octane. Observe knock count and creep up or leave as is.

If you're still seeing spikes and picking up a lot of knock counts with pre-defined knock sensor sensitivity by Hondata, toss some VP Octanium or Boostane in the gas tank, to see if knock activity diminishes. If it does not, you now know it's mechanical/phantom knock.

You can see a good example on Evan's forums of what knock looks like with a standalone, however, with Hondata you don't have such data so you're strictly relying on knock-count feature: https://evansperformanceacademy.vhx....or-false-knock

Evan will tune using knock sensor and reading plugs. In addition to what he does I still prefer to use audio knock detection, as I trust my ears more than the knock sensor, so I use a combination of all three methods mentioned above.

 

I appreciate your insight. I actually bought the Evans tuning courses for hondata flashpro . I just need to figure out a good way to dial in part throttle timing right now. I dont really have a long flat stretch of road to use the cruise control method to dial it in. So im thinking of just bumping in the timing untill i get some knock then backing off a couple degrees.

 

Hondata base maps, even the maps you see that he creates are all a good starting point.

To your point of inducing knock, that’s how I setup knock sensor and knocks floor and test it, but I only do that at low RPM, (say 2500) and high load, say WOT. Nothing higher.

In part throttle you might have issues inducing any knock btw, as you might pass MBT, keep advancing and end up losing power and never knocking. Or you’ll knock way past MBT. Without a dyno it’s difficult to know even with TPS/speed approach.