14 GT500 knocking like crazy

[Blue Bee]

Hey guys, so I had a customer who had mods done to his GT500 right when he bought it new, he had a dyno sheet showing 728hp which I thought was high considering the mods. He wanted to see if it was really making that kind of power, it made 630 and the first pull I let out out of it because I could hear it knocking. Hooked up my computer to do a scan, made a pull, scan showed no timing pulled, no KR at all but this thing was hammering. He paid $1200 for this “tune” from a well known Ford shop local to me, and didn’t really want to address it as it’s been a few years. I convinced him he needed to do something as it was not good and I showed him another stock GT500 tune I had and showed him they basically had changed nothing. I pulled timing and made another pull and it didn’t knock but why would the PCM not pick up on this? They didn’t change any knock sensor settings, or much of anything else but they do have LTFT disabled?? Luckily he has a bunch of cars and this thing only has 6K miles on it and he doesn’t beat on much. He said he thought that noise was an air leak and didn’t know, crazy loud knock, but what could they have done or I’m missing that the PCM isn’t detecting it?

Mods are fuel rails...? Yea idk, longtubes, full exhaust no cats, upper pulley, CAI. oh and shitty tune. Haha

[NickSezz]

Even if the PCM detected knock it can only pull out 1 degree per factory settings anyway. Pre-Copperhead GT500s didn't have knock sensors active at all. Was it not even pulling out that one degree?

[Blue Bee]

Right I know they didn’t not to long ago, have Knock sensors, I do know the PID works because at ONE time on tip in it pulled .5. That was it.

[Yagermeister]

Blue Bee can you post up the log and/or the tune file so we can see if maybe something was just overlooked?

[MRRPMBRP]

My 2014 GT500 was the same, knocked like a bitch, when I got it. I adjusted the wot fueling to where it would come on quicker, as it would make 15psi, and still be running non-wot fueling, at 14:1 A/F ratio. Then I adjusted base timing, still have some knock at low rpm, like 2000, which is too low to be lugging it down to anyway. I'm trying to make it to where it won't go 100% throttle until like 3000rpm or so, that way it can't make boost that low of an rpm. My totally stock 2010 GT500 won't knock any way shape or form, wot 5th gear, from 1000rpms, no knock. I'm pretty sure throttle won't allow 100% throttle that low of an rpm.

[Blue Bee]

Setting WOT fueling isn't going to affect when boost comes on, I'm hitting this car at 2K RPM on the dyno and it's making full boost pretty much right then.

arrival_tune.hpt

Dyno WOT.hpl

Here's the files, another thing I noticed is once again the TB tables are almost stock and car has CJ monoblade on it. Customer says it never starts first try. I wonder why...all I know is, I'm tired of cleaning up tunes. This would be the 2nd GT500 from the same local shop to me that has not even tuned the car for the monoblade. I'm told I'm to expensive...$700 is was I would have charged the guy, he paid $1200 for a crap knocking tune that didn't even make the car start on the first try.

[tbrtuning]

Setting WOT fueling isn't going to affect when boost comes on, I'm hitting this car at 2K RPM on the dyno and it's making full boost pretty much right then.

arrival_tune.hpt

Dyno WOT.hpl

Here's the files, another thing I noticed is once again the TB tables are almost stock and car has CJ monoblade on it. Customer says it never starts first try. I wonder why...all I know is, I'm tired of cleaning up tunes. This would be the 2nd GT500 from the same local shop to me that has not even tuned the car for the monoblade. I'm told I'm to expensive...$700 is was I would have charged the guy, he paid $1200 for a crap knocking tune that didn't even make the car start on the first try.

What really sucks is when some of these shops are the really popular ones bringing in all the money because of marketing or whatever.

[Witt]

Setting WOT fueling isn't going to affect when boost comes on, I'm hitting this car at 2K RPM on the dyno and it's making full boost pretty much right then.

arrival_tune.hpt

Dyno WOT.hpl

Here's the files, another thing I noticed is once again the TB tables are almost stock and car has CJ monoblade on it. Customer says it never starts first try. I wonder why...all I know is, I'm tired of cleaning up tunes. This would be the 2nd GT500 from the same local shop to me that has not even tuned the car for the monoblade. I'm told I'm to expensive...$700 is was I would have charged the guy, he paid $1200 for a crap knocking tune that didn't even make the car start on the first try.

Knock retard limit is set to 0 at 0.7 load and above.

[Blue Bee]

Knock retard limit is set to 0 at 0.7 load and above.

Thanks Witt, I see that now and comparing stock tune it was only set to 1 which is in line with what NickSezz earlier. I see they also took out advance limit. stock 4 degrees? I'm thinking I'll leave timing where I have it now on Mapped point 0 as it's not knocking, set up the KR limit so it can pull timing if needs be and maybe let it add advance again a couple degrees. Then lean it out some, runs low 10's AFR according to O2's.

[GHuggins]

Tune appears to have had a lot done to it unless I'm comparing to the wrong stock gt500 tune - obviously not all to the best way possible, but anyway - I was just wondering what kind of fuel the guy was running in it? Been seeing A LOT of Shell fuel knocking bad for the last year...

[Blue Bee]

Tune appears to have had a lot done to it unless I'm comparing to the wrong stock gt500 tune - obviously not all to the best way possible, but anyway - I was just wondering what kind of fuel the guy was running in it? Been seeing A LOT of Shell fuel knocking bad for the last year...

Yea it's hard saying as I don't have the stock file for this car. I know he runs 93, around here it's mostly QT and Racetrac gas stations, not sure where they get their fuel from, as compared to shell...

[Witt]

Tune appears to have had a lot done to it unless I'm comparing to the wrong stock gt500 tune - obviously not all to the best way possible, but anyway - I was just wondering what kind of fuel the guy was running in it? Been seeing A LOT of Shell fuel knocking bad for the last year...

Appears someone copied and pasted parts from other aftermarket tunes I'm guessing in an effort to see what worked and what didn't. The torque table is from a coyote cobra jet for instance.

[GHuggins]

Yeah I was thinking a lot of those looked like sct tables in the spark modifiers section.

[15PSI]

Engine displacement should be .00182, not .00291. I have no idea why this was changed or what affect it would have on the tune, if any.

[Blue Bee]

Yea the more I look at this I feel I should start with a stock file and start over, I've never seen anyone turn off the LTFT either. Also it seems commanded Lambda is .794 across the board, why so rich? maybe they were trying to eliminate knock by dumping fuel into it...?

[15PSI]

There are some modified GT500 cals in the repository. They might assist you in building a new tune. But just like the stock market, your results may vary...

[MRRPMBRP]

Setting WOT fueling isn't going to affect when boost comes on, I'm hitting this car at 2K RPM on the dyno and it's making full boost pretty much right then.

No, it's not, but if you add boost, you gotta add fuel. Mine didn't get to wot fuel until way after boost came on, knocking the whole time.
Same as mine, boost comes on quick, with the small pulley, typical roots, you gotta get fuel to it, under boost, no?
WHat A/F ratio is it running when boost hits? Mine would make a lot of boost at part throttle, causing knocking, couldn't even ease into it, without knock. If you was to go immediately to wot, it would only slightly knock, until timing went low, and it added fuel.

[Blue Bee]

No, it's not, but if you add boost, you gotta add fuel. Mine didn't get to wot fuel until way after boost came on, knocking the whole time.
Same as mine, boost comes on quick, with the small pulley, typical roots, you gotta get fuel to it, under boost, no?
WHat A/F ratio is it running when boost hits? Mine would make a lot of boost at part throttle, causing knocking, couldn't even ease into it, without knock. If you was to go immediately to wot, it would only slightly knock, until timing went low, and it added fuel.

oh yea I see what you are saying, well once I fix the KR tables to where the PCM is allowed to pull timing, I'll see how tip-in is, it seems to go into PE pretty quick looking at the log and based on the settings that was changed. I'll have to check PT when he brings the car back to get this all straightened out, he's mad because he has to pay for another tune, I don't blame him, not to mention what could have happened to the engine. They have .794 commanded, but it's running 10.3-10.5 AFR. Based on Stoich being 14.08 it should be 11.1-11.2 or so, which still seems a little on the rich side to me.

[Auto-Hentzschel]

they did a lot of stupid changes in that tune. The most stupid is, adding more the 20? timing in low rpm range and finally diabled the knocksensors and also disabled the LTFT and COT. Here in Germany with no speedlimit on highways...this engine die in very short time!

[Witt]

Yea the more I look at this I feel I should start with a stock file and start over...

This is your best bet.

A lot of what was done looks to counter problems that they didn't know how to properly tune for. For instance, the torque tables were probably used to try and get around high ipc wheel torque errors after installing the CJ throttle body without proper data. The engine displacement may have been changed to report load that they wanted to achieve for timing tables, etc.

Edit: Shops/tunes like this are exactly why I despise tune locking. I see more of this than I care to admit but in the end its usually the customer and another tuner trying to later figure out if its hardware problems or a hack tune like this one.