Publisher's Note: Welcome to our 41st edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "Knock Sensor Maintenance for Optimal Performance".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "AMSOIL" to see everything published to-date.

Knock Sensor Maintenance for Optimal Performance

John Gardner: Welcome back to Motorhead Garage. It's great to be back here at Motorhead Garage with my good friend Dave and the best crew in the business. You guys are going to love this. AMSOIL is stepping up to the plate and bringing us 52 Tech Tips. We all love the tech tips. Perhaps your car is a little bit sluggish? Well, maybe you're going along and you're losing performance. Well, that might just mean that your knock sensor is doing its job. What is a knock sensor? What does it do, and how does it work?

A knock sensor does exactly what it says it does. It senses knocks or vibrations in the coolant. How does that work? Well, here's a demonstration of a cylinder, and the piston's going up and down in here. It comes up to the compression stroke, and then bam, it fires. That's the power stroke. We want everything clean. We want everything good in here so that piston's not rattling from side to side. When it rattles from side to side like that, well, you're actually getting that right there, and that, inside of the coolant, causes vibrations in the coolant.

Then the knock sensor, sitting right there in the coolant jacket, it's a piezoelectric generator. It actually senses that and then it tells the computer, "Hey, that piston's rattling." And when that piston's rattling, bam, we're retarding timing, losing performance. Not a good thing. And you can look at the graphic right there. You can see the computer on the top. It's actually sensing that vibration, and down below, you see the knock at zero. Nothing's going on. When it starts rattling, it's at 3 degrees. Len, if I'm at 3 degrees, I'm losing power. That's not a good thing.

Len Groom: You are, and people may not even notice that until they go to fill up at the gas station. They're noticing they're using more fuel. The car isn't as responsive. So, why not keep the generator from doing its job in the first place by doing some simple maintenance items? And we're talking about AMSOIL Performance Improver today.

It's an extremely potent detergent. It's got some really cool technology inside of it that's designed to keep deposits from happening on top of the piston, going to create detonation, pre-ignition like you were discussing earlier, and cause that knock sensor to do its job. So, by using the proper combination of chemistry in here, we can keep that all from happening, keep the engine clean, keep the performance level and fuel economy up, and basically just keep that car happier.

John Gardner: Absolutely. If I'm not retarding the timing, I don't have to push the gas as much, I'm saving gas as well, and that's a huge thing today.

Knock Sensor Maintenance for Optimal Performance