I'm trying to remove my knock sensor to check if it's bad. On my 03 the ******* intake manifold is pretty much in the way and I'm having some difficulty getting to it. Pulling the I'm witht he motor in the car is a ******* pain. Any super hot tips to get to the sensor?

 

You don't need to pull the mani to get to it IIRC

 

This is the type of sensor that I have:

It's kinda up and to the left of the oil filter. I hate this stupid thing.

 

Move the alternator out of the way and go in from the front.

 

Will try tomorrow when it's light again, thank you. There's no way I will run more than 5lbs of boost without closed loop knock sensing so I have to get this done.

 

Can't you get to it by going in from the fenderwell (remove wheel of course) like you would when changing oil filter?

or the front like jay said.

still got your intake manifold support brace on? take that bitch off. much better access and its nearly useless

 

Would also be a good time to change out the oil filter as well.

 

Yes, I noticed that the dumb oil filter is in the way.

I guess I will rip it off- should change the oil before dynoing anyways.

Should I put in synthetic or the real stuff?

 

Synthetic and a quality filter would be the logical choice.

 

nm.

 

To answer your pre-edit question, I wanted to hook up the sensor directly to a preamp and see if it was producing any signal. I have a recording studio and the sensor is a microphone so that wouldn't have been a problem to try.

I'm not pulling the sensor now though. I connected up a test-tone box to the knock sensor harness connector. The test tone box puts out 1V and the Hydra displays the knock sensor voltage on the software interface. When I connected it up, I saw no change in the knock sensor ECU display.

That makes me think that the wiring is buggered, my factory harness is buggered, my ECU harness is buggered, or my ECU settings are buggered.

This stupid sensor is not rocket surgery. I had this exact same sensor on my old motor, with the exact same harnesses. The only difference is that I upgraded from hydra 2.5 to 2.6 along. That makes me think my ECU settings are fucked. This is a FM map straight from the mittens of Jeremy (got it yesterday) but the **** still isn't working.

A little more info on the ECU readout-- it doesn't actually read 0. It dithers between .1 and zero. Doesn't budge when I hit the block with a breaker bar. If knock was louder than that, well, my engine would be exploding. I think the knock sensor voltage range is probably 0-5v. My old map picked up about .5v of signal at 7000RPM. Light pinging was around .75v