Ok so I am restoring a 87 XLT and I pulled the motor to so I could do fresh bearings rings and such. Well when I pulled it I broke the knock sensor plug since it was brittle. I have now got to the point where the block is all painted with new internals and I'm putting small parts back on. I have been searching for a knock sensor and from what I'm finding it's discontinued and no where to be found. Anyone else attempted to find one? Know of an alternative part number that is still available? Or is it just to the bone yards I go?

 

You can use a knock sensor from a 2.3l

 

The part number is E67F-12A699-AA

And Knock offs are fine to use, yes, pre-1995 2.3l Knock sensor is the same.

There are two kinds of knock sensor designs, well for Ford any way, the one wire design was screwed into the block and wiring harness plugged into it.
It would sometimes have 2 wires but one was just a ground to engine, only 1 wire ran back to pin 23 on the EEC-IV computer.

For the EEC-V computers, 1995 and up they used a 2 wire knock sensor, it had a hole in the center for a bolt and it was bolted to the block, it would also have a wire lead in different lengths that would plug into the harness, both wires ran back to the Computer.

Technically each knock sensor was "tuned" for the engine size, but I have used 4cyl on V6 and visa versa and they still worked fine.
So if the sensor screws into the 1987 blocks hole it will work fine

Simple test to see if knock sensor is working is to have engine warmed up and idling
Then tap the block with a wrench and see if the RPMs change slightly, they should, the metal tap "sounds like" a knock to the sensor so computer changes spark timing slightly