What strikes me right away is your numbers for Wideband and AFRatioEst are way off in the places where you are on the throttle and getting a lot of knock.. They are both either way too lean (~16) or too rich (~9) in those places.
Then I noticed your Airflow numbers are nutty in those places too.

For example, look at 349.760 seconds and then 350.060 seconds.
You are at 100% throttle through there. Airflow and InjOn time should be going progressively upward.
But no. They go down.
At 349.760 you've got 3964 rpm, 12.5 Wideband, 10.9 AFRatioEst, and 14.5 Airflow.
At 350.060 you've got 4171 rpm, 9.4 Wideband, 12.5 AFRatioEst, and 11.4 Airflow.

Since you are at 100% throttle all through there and you are increasing rpm, it should be impossible for the Airflow to go down.
So I think your MAF is probably shot.

I haven't looked through the rest of the log after that. There might be more stuff to note in there.

That was what my thinking was too. The airflow numbers go down with increase in RPM, which is wonky. I'm not really familiar with tuning and where these numbers come from. I've tried tuning the idle as well, but the engine doesn't respond appropriately. I change one thing and try again and have to change it back.

Back when I was heavily into DSMs it was MAF Translators/SAFCs and they were pretty straightforward.

One thing to note is a hadn't touched the tune when I bought the car and drove it home (1 year ago, 50 miles) just fine. Going into boost wasn't an issue.

I've read throughout the forums that the only way to truly test the Karman Vortex style MAFs is with an oscilloscope, looking for spikes, dropouts, and other noise. With the log I posted (which is like an oscilloscope) would this qualify as a "dropout" or other type of noise?

Want to be as sure as possible before I drop money on another one.

Also, I've already tested for the necessary supplied voltages/grounds at the MAF connector and they were SAT.

Well, I'm not sure why an oscilloscope would be needed to test a Karman MAF.
Ahh wait, I'm thinking only about the fundamental frequency which is the frequency of the vortex. But if there is other noise mixed in there, then the signal is messy, it's got other frequencies, not just the fundamental. That could confuse the circuit in the ecu. If you were watching the signal on a scope you'd see the fundamental and also every other garbage frequency that's in there. Then if you knew what a proper MAF signal looked like and you could see that the one you are looking at is much dirtier, messier, then you'd know something is wrong with it.

I don't know. I just made that up by thinking of it like an audio signal which I know more about. An audio signal from a microphone or 2 microphones.

In your log, the MAF number displayed in Hz is always there and it seems to go along sensibly with the conversion to the Airflow number in lb/min. It's never just gone. So it looks like the ECU and DSMlink are getting a signal and doing the right thing with it. But maybe the signal coming from the MAF is just too messy to be read correctly.

Most of the multimeters that cost ~$100 or more can read frequency. They would be fooled by a messy signal too and you wouldn't be able to see it because it's only showing you one number at a time. That's like what we get from the ecu in DSMlink. One number at a time. So a scope would have the advantage of showing you everything that's in that signal.

A new AEM MAP sensor, like you would want for speed density, is about $150 right now. Then usually an Intake Air Temperature sensor is recommended for SD and they are cheaper. I don't even have one in my system.
So the parts for SD aren't expensive but then you have to fool around with a speed density tune which I haven't done. I had the tune done by somebody who knows what they are doing! (English Racing) So it should be a lot simpler to just replace the MAF.

I see a new MAF for 2003 to 2006 Evolution is $536 right from MitsubishiPartsNow. MR578399. Not too bad. That's a few bucks cheaper than a new 2g MAF from the same place. I think I would buy one and see if it does the job.

EVO MAFS are crazy expensive right now. If this is indeed a dead MAF I would need to contemplate going to SD or might just get a 2G MAF for the time being.

Anyone else out there have any advice? Looking through the log at 519.352 seconds the MAFRaw Hz drops from 801.8 to 569.5 with 100% TPS and climbing RPM. Is this a symptom of a bad MAF or could something else be causing this?

I'm not very familiar with reading all of these different MAF data points so any help is appreciated

RESOLVED: For anyone wondering I was able to rectify the crazy MAF reading (hertz readings jumping all over the place under load) by cleaning the MAF with CRC MAF Cleaner. I know there is a lot of debate on the subject of using MAF Cleaner, but it worked great in my situation. EVO 8 MAF.

92gvr4-514 said:

I was able to rectify the crazy MAF reading (hertz readings jumping all over the place under load) by cleaning the MAF with CRC MAF Cleaner

Click to expand...

Good deal!

Interesting... I'm sure that my 23+ yr old 2g mas could use cleaning

Need to bring this one back for further input.
The knock is still there even after switching from an EVO MAF to a 2G.
Anyone have any helpful hints where to start looking?

Airflow readings jump all over the place. Could this be connected?
No knock at WOT this time, only part throttle.
When it happened I let off the throttle and got on it again a few times and knock went away (when I went WOT).

I opened the ECU and it looks good.

Any thoughts/ideas are greatly appreciated!