If it does advance it like you said, it will do it on 87 octane as well. I've never heard my car ping a bit using 87 for the 43,000 miles I drove it before getting an intake and tuner. That tells me I was getting max HP out of 87. If it had pinged a little, then backed it off, or even just stopped advancing the timing, i would not be getting the full 300HP I paid for.

Ford calibrated the engine to advance some timing at WOT, yes. It also calibrated it to advance no more than it could safely do on good 87 octane fuel. If you get some questionable gas in there, or the engine is running very hot that day, you might see some spark knock(pinging) ...hence the knock sensors.

For reliability and especially emissions sake, Ford wants NO spark knock under most conditions with good fuel. Not a little bit and we'll compensate here and there to keep it at a minimum.

 

I guess what I am saying is that the 2*and 8* it advances should be able to be fully used on 87 with no pinging.

 

I am talking about the factory stock tune here, so it would be applicable for 87-105 octane unleaded. The knock sensor does not care about the octane, it just cares about detonation. No detonation? You get 2* advance above X RPM.

Now, the 93 octane tunes don't appear to do much with the KS table, except maybe reduce the retard limit to pulling 2* timing from 80%-100% load at all RPMs (pulls 8* elsewhere) and keep in mind that this will differ depending on the human tuner/programmer.

It's best not to rely on the KS advance/retard limits for tuning since the KS can be a bit finnicky.