If I wanted to I can completely rewrite all the code that is in the EEC, and I may even do that for the fun of it and create a race only setup with none of the emmisions or close loop stuff in it.
The knock strategy on our cars is actually very amazing. You are talking about it pulling 8 degrees of timing, and your right but its actually a gradual pulling per engine cycle with a maximum of 8 degrees retard. You have to take into account everything that is going on and not just one component.
High ACT's will pull timing as well and that starts at 120F and will pull up to 8 degrees of timing as well by 180 or so on a stock tune. The only way to get that timing back is to cool down the ACT. Now high ACT's will cause detonation as well which will trigger the knock sensor which will pull its timing amount per cycle. On my car the knock sensor started kicking in at about 142F, so not only was I getting hammered with act spark pull, I was getting it from the knock sensor and by the end of a 1/4 mile I was seeing about 12 degrees being pulled for an overall timing of 14 degrees. That was with 5% OD on a stock 94 blower with a single IC with a fan running 91 octane fuel (see why I discourage folks from OD'd their blower so much
).
Now think of it this way. In order for the spark retard to cancel itself with the knock sensor, we have to get rid of the source of detonation which would mean we need to suddenly lower our ACT...... problem here, thats not something that happens right away normally when your racing down the 1/4.
Will fuel enrichment help? I would venture to say yes, BUT how much fuel enrichment would be needed? We're already looking at 11.7 typically for our cars at WOT.... do we need a 10.0 AFR to cancel the detonation caused by 150F ACT temps at say 24 degrees of timing? How much power do we lose with an AFR and timing like that? How much power do we lose when 8 degrees of timing is pulled running an afr of 11.7? Oh to only have unlimited time on a dyno LOL!
You need to look at the whole picture, and with the QH and a wideband and GOBS of datalogging you can start to see what is really going on and optimize your tune to your car, and what you expect from the car. I'm at the point now I'll be running 2 tunes soon. One for street driving and getting best performance for the lllloooonnnggggg runs to keep the least impact of power loss from spark pulling and AFR and another tune to optimize the car for the short runs like the 1/4 mile.
So what we need to do is to do everything to prevent detonation from happening in the first place. Things like better IC's to keep the ACT's down longer to prevent detonation. Getting tunes done to optimize your motor to fit what you have. If your really after the best performance, then getting the tools to find out the limits of your motor and to allow you to experiment with settings in the tune to get the most for what your trying to do with it, and now we have access to those tools.
Its funny really, I was told a little while ago that tuning a car is nothing and very simple to do. A tune can make or break a motor. This same individual is going to have someone at a dyno shop tune his car in an hour..... yup, he's going to get max performance
.
Sorry for the length.
Fraser