Something not right, please help me.

[NothinButNotch]

I'll try and keep this concise but there is a lot of info to give for the full story...

I just finished installing a new Novi 1000 on my car (combo listed below). Along with the blower kit went 42 lb inj, a Powerpipe, a Pro-M 80mm MAF, and a 8" crank pulley.

I had the car dyno'd yesterday and a custom chip burned by Ed Clark of SCT. On the dyno (dynojet) the car did fine. We tuned it to a very flat 11.5-11.7 A/F curve across the power band. The numbers were a little lower than expected (340/360) but we agreed the AOD was mostly to blame for that (has a non-lock up converter). It made 260/300 N/A on a dynojet.

I was only seeing about 7-8 pounds of boost, which seems a little low for having the large crank pulley and the powerpipe, but the car did fine. Then we get out on the road to test it and its pinging at part throttle/tip-in, and at WOT. To make a long story short in order to get it to stop we ended up at 9 degrees total timing and adding 5-10% more fuel, making the A/F a pretty low 11.0:1

Everyone there agreed something else is wrong. We checked spark and fuel and everything was fine. The fuel was 93 octane Amoco. So the conclusion was that something was getting/staying very hot. Prior to installing the blower I had just completely flushed the cooling system and we were thinking there might be an air pocket but surely it would have "unplugged" itself by now. I dont seem to have any coolant in the oil nor any bubbles in the radiator or resevoir.

I wont write any more right now I just want to ask for some advice on things to check. It is VERY aggrivating at this point and I Just took it out and even with minimal warming up it seemed to still be knocking under part throttle (couldnt do a whole lot of WOT b/c the roads are still wet). Please help me figure this out. Thanks a ton, Ryan

[Chuck]

Could be a few things. Have you ever looked in your intake to see if there is oil in your runners? Oil is a major cause of detonation. Another suggestion to reduce tip in detonation would be to lock out your timing. Some times the computer will add way to much timing (for a blown application) in the mid range and on "tip in". Your timing sould go as ghigh as 40* degrees advanced at this point. If you know what you want your total timing to be, set your initial to that and leave the spout connecter out all the time. I used this method and liked it. It is much better than having a very low initial timing, the car will fell much better in the low end.

Try that and see what happens, but keep your ears open for detonation.

[NothinButNotch]

I checked the intake runners after reading your post b/c you are right that could cause it but unfortunately, in this case anyway, there was no oil. I did have some oil blowing out the oil dipstick tube but thats a whole different story.

As for the timing, with this chip the tuner has full control of the timing curve. He locked in what A/F ratio he wanted by altering the MAF. It was set to 11.5-11.8 in the beginning. Then from there he played with the timing, which has three "settings" with the A9P ECM (idle, part throttle, and WOT). All these were set to his liking. I unfortunately cant tell you right now without the file in front of me what the timing was throughout the curve but he had complete control and viewing of it all. According to him and other very knowledgeable people there, the amount of timing we ended up running along with the lowered A/F ratio was just way off. He said where we ended up leaving it is where they usually start a tune off to be on a completely "safe" side before doing any tweeking. And you are right, the stock timing curve was around 32* I believe.

I checked a few of the plugs that were easy to get to and they looked good. I will check all of them later this week. The tuner mentioned maybe a water passage being blocked (like a head gasket being flipped upside down and blocking the water jacket around #8 cylinder). I may pull off the upper and lower intake and check this but I really dont think that is the problem. Any other ideas anybody? Thanks again, Ryan