Knock Sensor Resistor Bypass/Mod

[admzn]

DIY by Ben.

Knock Sensor Resistor Bypass/Mod:

Find the pictured connector in the engine bay. It is normally attached to the PS valve cover. It is the bigger of the two just above the upper radiator hose. You will need to depin pins 7 and 8 (unless you want to cut the wires) to install the resistor. You will need a *560k* resistor, the oem spec is 500k-620k ohm, a 0.5w resistor is perfectly fine for this application.

As you can see in the pictures below I went full sloppy. For y'all I suggest soldering the resistor legs to the terminal pins and protecting with a couple pieces of heat shrink, then taping or zip-tying the loose wires down. You should also fill in the empty slots of the terminal with dielectric grease.

You will need a straight fine pick or depinning kit, tape, soldering tools, heat shrink and dielectric grease to do this properly.

Overall difficulty is 1/5, 5/5 being most difficult.

[ditchdrift]

Very nice guide. I did this same thing a while back and got a huge increase in mpg and power after living with a bad knock sensor for years.

[admzn]

Same, I can get near 20mpg on a tank in my stock 02. My modded one, not so much lol.

[jp2code]

I started down this path, and it looks like some mechanic had been in my wiring harness before. After I pulled the white electrical tape off of the 2 wires for the Knock Sensor, I found a large loop of bare shielding wire with some kind of tar keeping the wires shielded from moisture. It was like that sticky stuff that attacked Spider-Man.

You can see it making webs as I tried letting go of it.



And look at this crazy service loop!



I thought I'd found a bare spot below, but after cleaning it all off with Goof-Off, it turned out to be mostly bare wires.



Anyway, there was no way to solder to those wires because that greasy goo left a residue.

So I had to crimp the wires to terminals.

But my Knock Sensor code is GONE.

[admzn]

In the FSM the ground wire is supposed to be a shielding wire for the KS. That goo looks like liquid electrical tape. Good stuff if you don't expect to have to dig into it again lol.