Look, i love ngk plugs, but they are not acceptable as oem, especially just because some dealer only has them. The delphi ion sense system can be tiuchey aboutg the resistance values of non stock ignition parts. I have lots of dyno time testing and confirming this. Steve doesnt just manufacture tuning products, im quite sure that he's forgotten more than most of us will ever actually learn about tuning bike. You need to have your bike set up correctly on a dyno or have some extra gear installed to actually gather and record data so that you can make the required changes to your map. You cant just blame it on the lack of octanevand assume your fueling is good, with what you have described. You mightt need to be significantly richer than you are to correct the knocking. Tune to fix the issue, not to a given afr value. For me its easier to do on the dyno, you will just have to record lots of log data to do it

 

Mind you, this is all assuming you dont have a vacum leak as well as the incorrect soark plugs.
m

 

Maybe post up screenshots of the VE and spark tables.

 

Since there are 2 Mile High Harley locations, one in Aurora and one in Parker, I don’t know which one you went to. Since both of them are kind of on the east side of Denver Metro I will assume that is where you are. There are other HD dealers within 50 miles of you. If you are more north, try Sun Harley in Thornton or Avalanche Harley in Golden.

I am more south, so I will sometimes go to Pikes Peak Harley in Colorado Springs. All three of these are within the 50 mile distance.

call them up, get the proper plugs, and good luck.

by the way, I routinely go from 5,000 ft elevation to almost 12,000 feet up with no pinging.

I have a 2014 Street Glide Special. No engine changes. All services done at Mile High HD in Parker.

 

Mine pings too, but it pings less since I richened the mixture to OEM specs. I'm probably going to add some fuel in the problem areas. I get the vibe that these engines pinged from the factory because mine has widebands and still pings at OEM afr.

 

I have no allegiance to NGK, it was literally all they offered and was assured that they perform exactly the same as the OEM Champions. Independent shops I've worked with before only sold NGKs as well, because again, it's clearly a comparable plug. You still seem to think it's phantom pinging but I assure you I'm HEARING the pings. So the plug choice has nothing to do with it.

I CAN blame it on lack of octane when I had 10 years of running 93 with no issues, and then suddenly on 91 it's unable to stop knocking. That's empirical evidence. Also, once again if you would pay attention to what I've said, going to higher altitude makes your mixture RICHER not leaner. So to make the argument that my perfectly fine tune for 10 years is suddenly too lean at higher altitude makes absolutely no sense. Again, while I appreciate the responses, I don't think you guys are reading everything I'm saying. Steve, while I'm aware has more experience here than anyone else in the field, doesn't ever respond to entire posts. He fixates on the first sentence and then makes irrelevant statements to the obvious.

So to your comment about needing to go richer...I can't go richer and maintain closed loop. I'm at the rich end of closed loop. So, yes, I could go all open loop which I've tried in the past and does give benefits in terms of power and cooling. But that sacrifices fuel mileage and given that I live in a mountainous area, if I autotune for Denver and then run open loop, when I ride up to 10K ft I'm going to be running super rich, when if I was able to run closed loop, it would compensate.

What I was hoping to hear from people who might know more than me is...is this pinging at mid-load really something I should be concerned about, or should I just be blissfully ignorant like I'm assuming most people up here are who probably don't even noticed their bikes pinging?

@fuelmoto ?

 

Sure.

 

What do you mean by "OEM specs?"