[John at J&S]

Scott:

Shirley and I showed our unit to MoTeC USA in 1992. We had it on our 1981 Ford EXP. I was running about 10° too much timing with 87 octane. I had a switch that made it easy to disable the system, built into the knock retard display. Flip it one way to activate and watch the LED'S show it's retarding individual cylinders, flip it the other way and listen to it knock.

With that combination of fuel and timing, it was easy to induce knock. With the system activated, it controlled beautifully.

We arrived about 7PM I think, and they gave us the grand tour of JGM Automotive Tooling. Then I gave the keys to the two principles and they took the car out while Shirley and I waited.

When they returned we all went to a conference room to talk. They wanted it very badly. We wanted to sell complete systems, as we do today, they wanted to buy the microcontroller with my secured code. They wanted MoTeC in Australia to design a new board to accept my chip. Shirley said "That's the heart of our system, and you wouldn't sell your heart, would you?"

They made a very generous offer, but Shirley was kicking me under the table not to accept, so I offered to make a small module with the chip and supporting hardware (crystal, etc), fully encapsulated in epoxy but with pins to plug into a socket. They insisted on the bare chip, so no deal was made.

I think MoTeC released their knock system in 2010. They had two versions. One is an external module, the other is internal. What I had proposed eighteen years earlier.