Cool new wideband sensor setup, due out soon Options

[lapuwali]

Innovate Stuff

The Innovate Motorsports people are soon to release a new toy for wideband O2 sensing, the LC-1. I just looks like a fat plug you plug a stock Bosch sensor into, and will dump out a simple analog voltage (programmable, even), so you can use everything from a DMM to your Megasquirt to some other datalogging tool, and leave the thing hooked up all the time, rather than having the big and expensive LM-1 meter sliding around in the car.

Now I just have to finish assembling my MS...

[lapuwali]

Hm. Can't find a reference anywhere. I've read this a few times on EFI boards and mailing lists, though now that I think of it, this advice first appeared back in the days when WB sensors were so expensive ($250 each), that any threat to it was a very bad thing. The Bosch LSU sensor used by the LC-1 is only $25 each, and is a different enough design that it may survive a harsher environment. The sensors can certainly be poisoned by excess fuel, oil, or coolant (in water-cooled stuff), so blowing a head gasket can kill a sensor, too, as can running way rich.

Certainly, the only air-cooled production engine I can think of that used an O2 sensor as part of an OEM injection system is the later 911 engines. The only VW engines that would have been used in the era of O2 sensors are water-cooled, except MAYBE some of the very late Bus stuff (some of which was water-cooled).

The bulk of the OEM systems using a WB sensor for closed loop control usually run the engine leaner than ideal for lowest emissions and best fuel economy. Some, esp. Hondas, deliberately run VERY lean (17:1). This is WHY WB sensors came into being in the first place. Many of the early sensors, in fact, had a wider measurement range and better accuracy on the lean side than on the rich side, going from 20:1 to about 13:1. The Innovate people claim accuracy from 20:1 to 10:1, and they seem to be relatively stand-up people, so it looks like the LSU is a better sensor than the early Honda units. I have no idea if any of the sensors, even the LSU, would cope well with running at 12-13:1 for long periods, as the rich mixtures may poison them over the long haul.

Something to experiment with if/when I ever get one of these things.

Britain, you should go poking around the msefi forums. There's some discussion of the other wideband units in comparison to the Innovate units. There's a LOT of misinformation out there, some caused by ignorance, some caused by, um, commercial motives. The Innovate stuff CAN be calibrated fairly easily, sometimes TOO easily (the "free air" calibration requires that the sensor be removed from the pipe, really). I have no actual experience with any of these things, but I know some of the people doing the discussing, and they DO have direct experience with them.

In addition to the one Britain showed, the Tech-Edge people (Aussie company) also have a compact unit for roughly the same price as Innovate called the 2C0. It's not quite as small or tidy as the Innovate. The Tech-Edge site also has some discussion on the differences between their stuff and the Innovate, which seems pretty fair-minded. Everyone seems to have a healthy respect for the guy that founded Innovate, and the way his controller works seems to be quite different from the way a lot of the other controllers work, and it's apparently quite clever. I don't fully understand what he's doing, but I still don't fully understand how these sensors work, either.

One of the things I like about Innovate is they're practically local, in San Juan Capistrano. EFI Systems is in South Carolina.