No lifters won't do it all the time, the A/C compressor wont' do it all the time and neither will bad ball joints, and they can all cause PK. I've found that more times than not, it is something around the engine making noise rather than real knock
I'm using a Haltech E6k stand alone, back when i installed it the only choises that would support a wastespark 4 cylinder was Haltech, Autronic and Motec. I chose haltech on advice from Sean Glazier as he was having great success with it. Now those guys run AEM because Jason Siebles came out did the setup and tune for free and sold them on his units. They are good units, but too complicated in some of the simple areas where they don't really need to be... I.E... Idle, Cold start, afterstart enrichment etc..etc... GReat boxes, but a PITA to get everythig setup on compared to most other stand alones...The plug-n-play is what's really selling them, if people had to configure them from scratch like you do even on AEM's stand alone (universal race model) then a LOT less people wouild run them becaus ethye wouldn't be able to get the car started for weeks
