This whole ping/knock issue is way out of hand.
In people attempting to better performance, now add this real crappy new smog gas people have to beware what is going on in their engine.

Since Ca started using this junk gas I have been testing and tuning and what a fricking mess.

Knock is one issue but to make it worse is Type A errors such as multi misfires are being triggered.

Some people try to solve these issues with fooling the PCM with a phony IAT with a contant resistor value, this is not a fix for all possible mods an engine may have.
Others do it by using a thermostat with a lower opening temp value.

The big problem with a lot of this is these engines were designed to mandates, of CARB, SAE, EPA.
All forcing nameplates to have monitors (PCM functions) to watchdog and flag what you've done so that smog stations can tell what your up to in messing with those state and federal mandates.

When the engine is started it goes though some test modes and warmup cycles. An example is to have DTC cleared, the engine has to go through 3 trips and warmup cycles.
A valid trip ( assuming your PCM code has not been mucked with for these mandatory FTP ( federal tests) ) is engine started and is not valid until the water temp has gone from 160 to 200 degrees.
If the thermostat is lowered, the engine never meets the 200 ( or rarely does) degrees and thus the DTC never gets to the 3 valid trips ( or takes much more time to get to 3 valid trips) to be cleared out correctly.

This was one way the smog pigs plotted to catch you been a bad boy, for smog station now have to test for DTCs, and can tell if your engine has not been following their rules and also if you dump the battery to try and hide your tracks, certain tests PCM runs then will show an incomplete and again you are caught.
One test is called the I/M, it takes several trips before they are completed, so again if you blow the PCM's Keep Alive Memory (KOM) out, the tests and conditions for errors have to start all over again to meet the proper trip cycles.

Here is a real example of a report of a I/M test and if I had gone to a smog station they would have seen the incompletes and fail me without ever doing the smog tests.



This was reported by the Ease powertain Scanner and shows why you want a real scanner that does tests like this and complies with the standards set forth for OBD-II compliant scanners.

As a member of SAE, I have been reading all the standard documents and there is a lot to know about what the smog pigs have done to catch us changing functions beyond what they dictate of our engines performance.

John