How do I know if my engine ping?

How do I know if my engine ping?

Since we got anti knock senor for 98+ rolla and it will adjust the timing itself. How do we know my engine ping or not?
The reason I ask this is in my the street dyno run (the gay G-tech dyno, lol) last week, the graph is going up and down all the way in the 2nd gear. I wonder if it's because the weather is getting hot to cause the engine ping.
Maybe I should get some higher grade gas to try.

You can feel it if it pings. Its really obvious.

Not to mention you can hear it as well

How exactly does it feel?

Pinging will sound like little rocks being tossed around inside the engine. Usually will happen at part throttle or full throttle - very rarely at idle, unless your air/fuel/timing is royally screwed up.

Depending on the amount of miles on your engine - stepping up a grade may help. Mine has almost 150K on the clock, running 89 octane and everything seems to be fine - no pinging at all, fuel economy is actually a bit better too. Will run OK on 87, but I notice knocking/pinging when going up grades or when I keep the hammer down when merging onto the freeway. Datalogger shows some timing being pulled on the lower octane gas at higher RPMs, but not all the time - could also be the resolution of the datalogger as well.