I am putting a gear drive in my 91 Z28 with a 350 and since gear drives make a lot of noise and may trigger the knock sensor. I was wondering if anyone knew how to bypass the knock sensor.

 

By removing the ECM and all the other engine controls, buy
a classic carb/intake combo and a new distributor

viola! no knock sensor.

TPI/TBI motors and even the LG4 computer controlled V8's
and other variants lose alot of it's good drivibility by disabling
the knock sensor.

Some people claim it is as clear as day & night to notice
the difference in performance with a knock sensor than
without one.

Knock sensors are vital, they sense even the slightest
of detonation and retard timing when needed. Id hate
to ping and chatter at the top of my RPM band.

My only suggestion is to save your money and forget
about the gear drives, unless you dont mind scraping
the electronics.

 

I had a gear drive in my race engine for a weekend then yanked it out and put a chain back in. It was too noisy, even for a race engine.

 

You can just unplug it. You'll lose the automatic spark retard, but nothing else.

 

Unplug the connector from the knock sensor. Wire a 3.9K resistor from that connector to ground. The ECM will think the sensor is still in place. However, you may have an issue at WOT. Some calibrations are set up to force knock on the first WOT pass. If you get a code 43 at WOT that is why. Can only try it and see if the cal is set up that way or not. Odds are it isn't and everything will work fine.

The above is based on a '91 with a 350, which is a TPI engine running the '7730 ECM. If this wasn't stock, then the above may or may not work correctly.

RBob.

 

gear drives arnt worth the money for a low HP street car put a timing chain on it