View Knock Control without Ktuner

dodgeswinger73

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I am wanting to be able to monitor my knock control values but have no plans to tune my car. Is there any other options besides Ktuner? I don’t want to pay $500 just for the gauges. I was hoping to find a dongle that would work with Tunerview. Thanks.
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gtman

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If you aren't tuning your ECU and you're using the recommended 91 or more octane, do you really need to monitor K. Control?
 
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dodgeswinger73

dodgeswinger73

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If you aren't tuning your ECU and you're using the recommended 91 or more octane, do you really need to monitor K. Control?
Yes actually, I would like to be able to monitor it during AutoX events. I want all possible information available to me so I get a more clear picture of what is going on under the hood.
 

gtman

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dodgeswinger73, if you're monitoring knock control and see it spike, what adjustments can you make beyond using higher octane without having an ECU tuner like KTuner? I'm just trying to learn here. Thanks.
 
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charleswrivers

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If you're monitoring knock control and see it spike, what adjustments can you make beyond using higher octane with having an ECU tuner like KTuner? I'm just trying to learn here. Thanks.
With a tuner... less boost or less ignition timing. You could go further and try to add a smidge to fuel trims but you could risk actually losing power, and having issues that could range from fouled plugs to issues with you catalytic converters.

Without a tuner? Eeeh.... maybe adding a restriction in the intake to limit the amount of air that can make it into the engine and choke it out a bit... NASCAR restrictor plate style? That might actually be counter productive in a turbocharged car though. I can't think of much else that's easy. Since the cars al can run on 87 octane, even the ones that get the premium recommendation, there's so much room for ignition retard it would seem pointless. K.control rising isn't hurting your car, OP. It protects your car by dynamically adjusting ignition timing down if needed to prevent knock. If conditions support a minimal amount of knock retard, it'd stay bottomed out, maximizing your ignition timing and giving you the most amount of timing advance that your fuel anti-knock properties and ambient temperatures which affect intake air temperatures would allow.

All that being said, I know of no way to monitor K.control without a tuner device and am unsure if a simple ~$20 ELM327 Bluetooth dongle and an app like Torque can see a parameter like "K.control". It's good for sensor data and codes but I'm not sure about something that is essentially a computated ignition correction.

I'm with @gtman on this one... if you're not doing any tune at all, I don't think there's any reason to monitor k.control. I'm running 24.5# of boost and extra timing on a reflash, up from a normal 17-18#s and lower ignition timing you'd see on a stock Si. I datalogged after doing the reflash to see how k.control reacted to the tune and, post reflash it dropped from the default post-reflash 0.59 value it normally does and settled to 0.49 even with me beating on the car with ~80F ambients. I don't keep anything in my car to see k.control 24/7 now because I know everything working fine. I'm not dismissing your desire to want to monitor it... I just don't think it's necessary. You can run any grade of fuel you want and maybe pick up a few hp by running premium over 87... but k.control isn't going to be wildly affected and has plenty of margin to keep your engine safe. It's once you start messing with things like more boost or advancing ignition timing that I think there's value in looking and seeing that it's reacting properly comes into play. It also is indicative if your tune is excessive, as a rapidly rising k.control value shows that the engine is having to add a lot of timing retard to prevent knock. The timing retard would lower engine power and would be counterproductive to your 'tuning for power' efforts.

I'll try to hunt down my old OBD2 dongle and see if it gives k.control value when I get home, but I'd be shocked if it did. It's not a sensor reading, it's a value computed in the ECU several inputs... and I'm not even sure what every variable that comes into play is. Here's a little write up about it.

http://www.ktuner.com/KTunerHelp/ig....htm?ms=AkMANCAFBA==&st=MA==&sct=MTk0&mw=MjQw

IATs might be the best you can monitor for autocrossing, as it does directly affect k.control. If you're not tuning, boost pressure isn't a variable... but in high demand instances like autocrossing, I'd expect IATs to rise a noticeable amount and would be able to be monitored through your OBD2 port.
 


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dodgeswinger73

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With a tuner... less boost or less ignition timing. You could go further and try to add a smidge to fuel trims but you could risk actually losing power, and having issues that could range from fouled plugs to issues with you catalytic converters.

Without a tuner? Eeeh.... maybe adding a restriction in the intake to limit the amount of air that can make it into the engine and choke it out a bit... NASCAR restrictor plate style? That might actually be counter productive in a turbocharged car though. I can't think of much else that's easy. Since the cars al can run on 87 octane, even the ones that get the premium recommendation, there's so much room for ignition retard it would seem pointless. K.control rising isn't hurting your car, OP. It protects your car by dynamically adjusting ignition timing down if needed to prevent knock. If conditions support a minimal amount of knock retard, it'd stay bottomed out, maximizing your ignition timing and giving you the most amount of timing advance that your fuel anti-knock properties and ambient temperatures which affect intake air temperatures would allow.

All that being said, I know of no way to monitor K.control without a tuner device and am unsure if a simple ~$20 ELM327 Bluetooth dongle and an app like Torque can see a parameter like "K.control". It's good for sensor data and codes but I'm not sure about something that is essentially a computated ignition correction.

I'm with @gtman on this one... if you're not doing any tune at all, I don't think there's any reason to monitor k.control. I'm running 24.5# of boost and extra timing on a reflash, up from a normal 17-18#s and lower ignition timing you'd see on a stock Si. I datalogged after doing the reflash to see how k.control reacted to the tune and, post reflash it dropped from the default post-reflash 0.59 value it normally does and settled to 0.49 even with me beating on the car with ~80F ambients. I don't keep anything in my car to see k.control 24/7 now because I know everything working fine. I'm not dismissing your desire to want to monitor it... I just don't think it's necessary. You can run any grade of fuel you want and maybe pick up a few hp by running premium over 87... but k.control isn't going to be wildly affected and has plenty of margin to keep your engine safe. It's once you start messing with things like more boost or advancing ignition timing that I think there's value in looking and seeing that it's reacting properly comes into play. It also is indicative if your tune is excessive, as a rapidly rising k.control value shows that the engine is having to add a lot of timing retard to prevent knock. The timing retard would lower engine power and would be counterproductive to your 'tuning for power' efforts.

I'll try to hunt down my old OBD2 dongle and see if it gives k.control value when I get home, but I'd be shocked if it did. It's not a sensor reading, it's a value computed in the ECU several inputs... and I'm not even sure what every variable that comes into play is. Here's a little write up about it.

http://www.ktuner.com/KTunerHelp/ignition_timing_and_knock_control.htm?ms=AkMANCAFBA==&st=MA==&sct=MTk0&mw=MjQw

IATs might be the best you can monitor for autocrossing, as it does directly affect k.control. If you're not tuning, boost pressure isn't a variable... but in high demand instances like autocrossing, I'd expect IATs to rise a noticeable amount and would be able to be monitored through your OBD2 port.

Thanks for the reply. It is not a necessity for me to be able to monitor it to make adjustments. Because simply put, it is what it is on a stock car. I simply want the option to view it to see if my engine is pulling timing because of heat soak, poor fuel quality ect. I though it could be a good canary in the coal mine for other issues. I was just wondering if there was a PID out there that I could use to monitor KControl. If not that fine but I wanted to ask to make sure. Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it.
 

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If you're concerned about the engine pulling timing, remember K. Control will spike due to high IAT's as well as the other factors mentioned. Seems to me, IAT's are what you really should be monitoring on the track.
 
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dodgeswinger73

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If you're concerned about the engine pulling timing, remember K. Control will spike due to high IAT's as well as the other factors mentioned. Seems to me, IAT's are what you really should be monitoring on the track.
I know what I need to monitor. I can already monitor both IAT readings with my scan tool dongle and the torque app. My original question was if it was possible to get a PID for kcontrol or if there was another app that could display it other than tunerview.
 

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Here's a thread that talks PIDs. It actually asked about k.control after the large 1st post. There's some thing you can pay $5000 dues to and get the non-standard PID list for Honda. Its what I assume companies like Ktuner and Hondata do... have done... or through years of work, have managed to get. They must know it as their devices show it... but I don't know if they'd care the share. The information likely came with some cost to them in time/money and is an incentive to buy their products. I was intrigued by your question and did a search. So far as Google is concerned, I never saw anything come up giving an answer across all the different Honda vehicles that use it. I never did hook up my dongle but it looks like there's no PID out there to enable it... though in you search, there are threads where we got ECT and IAT and IAT2 figured out, with 2 being before the intercooler.

Here's the best list I found. It's derived from another list off site.

https://www.civicx.com/threads/supported-pids.27069/
 

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hi guys, i have found a diagnostic tool that can see "missfire on cilinder 1,2,3,4" and ignition advance timing in real time. i dont know if i can say the name of the tool, even if it is not what we want but its a start.

as talked we need one that can see "knock control" i guess this is the one in ktuner that represents alterations in ignition when the ecu verifies bad gas, high temps, etc.

i read a lot about ktuner showing 0.49 and up and it is referring to this. So I guess, if you guys say that there is no Id to this field, this 0,49 and up value must be a interpretation of Kcount in conjunction with other parameters that only ktuner engineers know as said above.

i suspect that the ECU reports when ever it changes the ignition angle to compensate bad gas etc.. but its just me thinking.

I live in Azores (Europe) and we have 95 and 98oc fuel ( I think RON value or = to 91 and 93 US), they are about to end with 98, so I am trying to monitor this as well.
Hondata does not support my ecu firmware yet so I cannot monitor this, ktuner don't know much of it, so ELm327 and a diagnostic tool is the only solution.

if we can't find a decent tool, I suppose there's only one way without ktuner or hondata, we can log (pro versions normally have this) some pulls at WOT with different Gas and compare the misfire and ignition angle ourselves.
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