air/fuel meters and other conveniences

[Anonymous]

I want a good wideband air/fuel meter. Any preferences here? Auto Meter seems to get the most press. But looking at Summit and Jegs, I see some other wideband meters that cost a good deal less and presumably do the same job. Anybody tried any of those?

And what about dash-mounted timing controllers (you might surmise that I am getting lazy as a tuner )? Racers use them as a high-speed retard, but you can set up your dizzy so that you can have both retard and advance, tho' half as much of each. MSD, I think, used to make one, and maybe still do and I am just blind. Jacobs made a couple of versions, but they seem to have declined and croaked since the founder sold the company.

I can road-test and get fairly close to a happy advance curve and jetting with a tach, vacuum guage, stopwatch, and a dial-back timing light (I love that thing!), but an A/F meter and dashboard timing control (don't tell me about your grandpa's Model A) would make life simpler.

 

[Greywolf]

I've usually used the Innovate LC-1 wideband controllers; Innovate sell an A/F meter fairly inexpensively.

On the other hand, if you're just going to do this a few times, and you're using the Innovate setup, you can use the thing with a laptop and buckle it into the passenger's seat while you're tuning.

I'm torn on the A/F meters, they are incredibly useful for tuning but 99% of regular driving they're just "filling a hole". A/F changes very quickly when things are happening, so they aren't stable like a temp gauge, and unless you happen to be looking at the right time, you may not catch the dip into lean or the spike into rich. And if you're watching the gauge, you're not watching the road. So I've used them for tweaking tuning, but never left them in place after...on the Volvo and the Mercury I might, or I might just leave the hookups and put a clock in their place for regular driving.

 

[Greywolf]

I should add that on the Volvo and Mercury, I'll be running modern EFI which is being tuned and tested for a while, versus setting up carbureted engines which can't easily be datalogged and tuned on the fly. I've never scratch-built an injection setup like I am on those two cars and that's the only reason I'd be leaving the A/F meters in long-term.

Having an A/F meter with a windshield suction cup for tuning and a place to mount an oxygen sensor in the exhaust seems like a good idea for any car that is regularly tinkered with. Before A/F meters I'd used a Gunson Colourtune which is a fairly nifty clear spark plug setup. It works, but it's an idle-only device and can be fiddly. Being able to watch the A/F meter from the driver's seat is a great help; being able to flip it around and watch it while you're under the hood is even better. Being able to log the A/F ratios is far better, especially if you can log rpm and throttle opening at the same times. That's the easiest way to tune anymore.

But again, after tuning...I think it could be another distraction. That's why I like idiot lights:
/begin short rant
Too many gauges keep your eyes off the road. I like having the gauges, but having a big light you can't miss to tell you that you need to look at them. And then you can ignore the gauges until you get to open traffic, or a stoplight, or whatever. And then, when the light comes on and you suddenly realize that the oil pressure has dropped a bunch but you were busy merging in heavy traffic, you don't have to curse yourself for not seeing the signs.
/end short rant

So, now that I've gotten us off topic a little...what form of distributor are you using? Some Duraspark units have a spark retard feature for starting or boost (older turbo setups) which could probably be toggled with a switch. Depending on the unit, it can either retard by a certain number of degrees, or pin the timing at 10 degrees BTDC (like the TFI units due in limp-home or testing modes).

 

[Anonymous]

First, on the cockpit-controllable spark retard units, right after making the first post here I went home and opened a Jegs catalog right to most of a full page of MSD timing controllers. Blind and stupid, too :duh:

Thanks for the review and the impressions, Greywolf. I'll look into that Innovate unit. I'm old, and only slowly getting clued into computers, and am not ready to try the all-digital computers and controls though I recognize their merits. I'll use the A/F meter on multiple projects, and it won't be a long-term installation in any of them.

As to your rant, I take your point but have a somewhat different view. For me, guages added to an idiot-light car are helpful in watching long-term trends . . . the oil pressure or the voltage gradually dropping, the manifold vacuum needle getting a twitch, etc.. I like to have a tach, too. I don't need it to tell me when to shift (some newer manual shift cars have a little light to tell the clueless when to shift!), and I don't need a vacuum guage to tell me how to use the throttle for best economy. I just like to have them there for when I do want their information. Little (and big) airplanes have a panel with lots of guages, even though in clear weather and away from controlled airspace you can fly and land without reference to them and even though most hobby-pilots are not instrument-rated and can't legally fly into overcast anyway, but I still like to have them and don't feel overly distracted by them. The distracting thing in a car for many drivers is the damned cel-phone and the radio or CD player (that is MY rant )

 

[Greywolf]

Smitty, I'm not saying I'd rather have an idiot light and no gauges. But if a gauge is in the cockpit, I'm looking at it. In an airplane, an instant problem is an instant problem and you need to get to land to fix it. In a car, if the engine quits, you can still pull over. And it's far more common to look at the gauge (or radio...another rant there...) and bump into the car in front of you. Usually aircraft have a bit more room to maneuver.

So I like having a couple gauges that have fairly consistent information in front of me (Speedo, Tach, Oil Press, Water Temp) and a few of the more stable/less likely to result in expensive damage gauges to the side (Fuel, Volts/Amps, Trans Temp/Fuel Press/etc...) with a big light in the middle of the dash that comes on to let me know to look at the gauges because there might be a problem.

I don't ignore the gauges, but in traffic I'm not following trends, just looking to head off problems. And deal with the other idiots in cars around me. I'd rather have an light for that. Actually, I'd like a light to help me deal with the idiots, too...maybe a landing light off a B52 or something.

 

[E4ODnut]

This thread is a bit old, but if anyone is still interested I have both an older DIY wide band with a OZ DIY display on a couple of vehicles, and an Innovate LC-1 on my boat. They both work satisfactorily but I can't say for sure if they would yield exactly the same readings in the same application. It's of no major significance because it's not really the numbers that are important, but rather how the numbers trend.

Oh, and I won't bring up my grandfather's Model A, but I will mention that I've had several Model A's, one of them being my first car. Purchase price Cdn$5 (but it needed some work).

 

[Anonymous]

Recently read somewhere that the O2 sensors can start getting inaccurate fairly quickly (soot?).

 

[E4ODnut]

Hmmm. I hadn't run across that one before and I doubt that it's true. I've been running older NTK sensors for several years with no issues. I believe the Bosch sensors are as good as or better.

The sensors themselves are just part of the package though. You need a controller to go with it. As I mentioned, I have an old DIY one that I built, an OZ DIY (Tech Edge) and an Innovate LC-1. I only bought the Innovate because it made for a one stop shop at DIY Autotune where I bought my last Megasquirt stuff. If I had to do it again I'd probably stay with Tech Edge because they've been in the business for a long time and this is their specialty. Check out their web site.

http://www.techedge.com.au/

They've also got some pretty good FAQs and other information. Also, if you have specific questions Peter is usually very good at responding.

 

[jamyers]

Are you selling the DIY wideband? If so, details?

 

[E4ODnut]

I don't even think the DIY is still around. It's been at least 7 years, but if I recall I bought it about the same time as my first megasquirt board and bill of materials. It uses the NTK sensor which is very expensive. The latest offerings use Bosch sensors which work just as well or better at less than half the price. At that time there was no inexpensive option for a wide band, now there are lots of choices. As I mentioned, Tech Edge would be my first choice, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with the LC-1 either.