What should I do about my main spark table?

[dave w]

There is the option of temporarily disabling the Knock Sensor to compare the history tables, with knock sensor and without knock sensor.

Possibly tap on the block, near the knock sensor, with a small hammer (vehicle in park at or near idle RPM's) and see if the history table records any knock retard.

It would be a good plan to look at knock counts in the exported data log, aka .csv Excel spreadsheet.

dave w

[rang-a-stang]

Good idea! I’ll try that out this week and post up my results.

[rang-a-stang]

OK, I rapped on it with a hammer and it looks like I got a little knock retard.

[rang-a-stang]

OK, I rapped on it with a hammer and it looks like I got a little knock retard. Not nearly as much as I would expect though.

[In-Tech]

There are at least 5 knock sensors for that computer. V-6, 305 manual trans, 305 auto trans, 350/454 manual trans and 350/454 auto trans. Being a different block completely you will have to see which one is more accurate in your block. Then there is also the knock sensor circuitry in your memcal

[Mr Weston]

Only a newbie, but I know the frequency of the knock 'sound' is related to bore size, and computer input is electronically filtered to listen to that particular frequency for knock detection.
I'll leave it up to you to determine if that's of relevance here.

[rang-a-stang]

Rather than start a new thread, I will hit this one. First my original issues WAS:
When I first started my truck tuning adventures, I did not have a knock sensor so I disabled all the timing retard capability by setting the "minimum temperature for knock retard" to 151C in my BIN, and promptly forgot about it. I also had retarded a bunch of the timing table because it looked like too much timing. Luckily I keep a log with every change I make to my BINs so during a look back over my notes, I saw it, put it back to 35C and added 4 degress of timing to the whole table. Now that I turned it back on, I not only have knock counts, I have timing being retarded the way it is supposed to!!! WOOO HOOO!!!

MY QUESTION NOW, THOUGH:
I have done a tuning run with my timing tables and have data on my knock retard. Do I just take that Knock retard number (running avergage), subtract it from the value in the timing tables, install new table in my truck, rinse, and repeat? Am I looking for 0's or just less than say .5? Is it really that easy to tune timing? I feel like I am over simplifying it...

[dave w]

Usually spark changes of 1 or 2 degrees will change the knock retard averages. It can be challenging to reduce knock retard, because increasing or decreasing Spark Advance will affect knock retard averages. Sometimes adding Spark Advance will eliminate knock retard averages, which seems counter-intuitive.

dave w