Knock gauge vs scanmaster

[Just a Six??]

Funny that some of you say your audible Caspers knock goes off a lot? I never hear mine go off unless I'm really pushing the car?
I like the scream at me while trying to drive, watch guages & stay in my lane at the same time. The lighted one I dont care for too much as its too sensitive. It's lights are flashing & the audible is quiet unless the lights are almost lit up all the way? Then it makes a noise. To each his own but the scanmaster is a must IMO. Cheers!

 

[bmackinnon]

yes the Scanmaster displays knock!!! ya you can get all sorts of "data" from all the stuff out there.. BUT some people have no idea what to DO with the data! we run a scanmaster on Melissa's 9 sec street DRIVER !! pretty easy to just watch for NO knock

Agreed Dan, I just didn't know if SM would show both knock counts AND knock retard.... even turbolink will display both. The knock gages start screaming when they receive knock -counts-, which the ecu will sometimes ignore as false based on their acoustical signature and not retard the timing. Also agree about some people's ability to analyze data.... but being the engineering geek I am, I'm of the opinion that mo' data is mo' better... :smile: I can ANAL-yze my 13-sec. runs for hours!! :redface: :biggrin:

 

[JST A 6]

Does the Scanmaster not measure/display knock 'counts' as well? If not, than that is certainly a drawback of the SM.... although perhaps a conscious decision by it's creator (Bob?) to 'draw the line somewhere' with respect to the amount of data collected/displayed. And it's right to mention the SLOW data rate (unless you have the 'quick-update chip - and I'm not certain just how fast that is) of the SM as a reason to also have a 'knock count detector' of some sort to augment the SM. However, all that is just further justification to use DirectScan (for us poor people ) or Powerlogger as the REAL tool to tune/monitor... WAAAYYY more info available... :wink:

The Scanmaster (at least the version I have, the 2.1) only displays how many degress the timing is retarded by the computer due to knock (knock retard), not actual knock counts. I've thought about getting Eric at TT to burn a fast update chip for me but then I'd lose the ability to read malfunction codes on the Scanmaster (minor loss IMO) and the ability to use many of the tuning aids out there that rely on the ALDL data stream for their info (a major problem for me right now since all I have to monitor/tune with besides the Scanmaster is a friend's OTC4000, which if I remember correctly I think is capable of displaying knock counts). A buddy of mine has the fast update chip and when we tried the OTC in his car we had all sorts of crazy readings even at an idle in his driveway.

 

["Turbo-T"]

Or maybe they are notoriously misunderstood might be more accurate to say. They interpet knock differently than a scanmaster.And are still a valuable tool to have in your arsenal.

Yeah they do interpet knock differently. The best was when I was running pure 110 octane fuel, spraying alky, running about 20 lbs of boost, running 20/18 timing yet somehow I could set the silly thing off to go into the red. Clearly false knock.

Besides I have found the alarms I can hide under the dash and it's one less gauge I have to monitor. I can use my hearing to lift if it starts knocking.

 

[TurboV]

i like to have both because the scanmaster by itself is never going to read real knock fast enough, no matter how the chip is burned. if there is serious detenation, i like having both to read and see.

 

[turbocam]

knock gauge

I have the caspers gauge and the scanmaster.Sometimes the gauge will go into the red and the scanmaster will show nothing.Going down the track it may go into the red,and the SC may show less than 1 degree of knock.Too sensitive IMO.