Knock Ears - Tips Needed - RB26

Got myself some hose, ear defenders and copper pipe. Hooked it all up and secured the pipe to the inlet manifold but I'm struggling to pick up any knock noises. Either there isn't any, I'm not picking it up or the general noise of the car/engine/exhaust is drowning it out.

Any tips on how to improve this?

I fitted some new Bosch sensors a few months ago and still have the gain set to 1 across the board.

Are you confident you've made the engine knock? It's possible you haven't yet, and that's why you've not heard it.

Well, no, but I have been cautiously adding 5% over a few runs to see if I could hear anything or see if the knock levels would increase but they haven't.

Rather than adding a tiny bit of timing at high engine load, have you tried briefly running a lot of extra advance in a light load area where serious damage is unlikely?

For example perhaps set up only 2400-2600 RPM, only in a load range associated with light throttle cruise, so timing is much higher than normal, perhaps 45-50 degrees BTDC, and only drive through the area once.

I've found on great fuel I can't cause knock this way, but on pump gas usually you can, and then you at least get to hear what knock sounds like on your engine without it being drowned out by how loud other things get at higher load and RPM.

Thanks Mike, might be worth a try. I am using decent fuel which is 99 Octane. Was doing a bit of research and I'm also going to hook up the laptop to listen to the existing new bosch knock sensors to see how that works out.