Ok, did I hook this thing up wrong or is this thing really that worthless. When the car is warming up it reads great, when I'm not on the gas and the motor is holding the car back (say costing down hill in 3rd) it goes blank which I understand is correct. The rest of the time its just all over, some times all the lights are lit up, some times lean-stoich is all lit up, sometimes about 3/4's of them are. Is this just what they do? Did I hook this up wrong, I just tapped into the drivers side purple wire next to where the throttle cable comes out of the firewall?

Thanks for any help
Craig

 

Those gauges are a complete waste of time, and only give you a MILD indication of whats going on. They rely on a sensor that is reasonable at best.

The easiest way to identify there is an issue before you verify it on a wide-band dyno, is to scan the car and watch the readings via TTS or the like.

It is normal for the gauge to bounce all over, because thats what the sensor is doing. You can't really tell what the motor is doing by watching the gauge.

 

If its an AutoMeter gauge, read the instructions that came with it... they clearly indicate that in closed loop/part load driving the O2 mV's will be jumping all over the place. That's the nature of the beast.

AutoMeter A/F Instructions

The A/F gauge is a good source for a psychedelic light show, and not much more.

 

That guage is useless, just for looks. What is it, around $60 for a lifetime light show on your pillar. I came across that guage so I can fill up the empty hole in my guage pillar. That thing jumps all over the place and I always wondered how you suppose to use that "Light-Bright" guage for tuning? Looks cool tho huh...LOL

 

Yes its an Autometer and I did read the instructions. Just jumps around more then the instructions suggest. I just wanted to be sure that I didnt do something wrong.

Yea, kinda wish I didn't waste the money on it, looks kinda ricey. Love the vacuum gague though, that turned out really nice.

 

I thought that I read somewhere that under full wot that it will give a steady reading that is in the ballpark??

 

First, they suggest that each LED is about 50mV. But there are no numbers on the gauge. Then, it relies on the stock O2 sensors... not intended to be accurate at the kind of A/F ratios you see at WOT (~13:1). A change in operating temperature of the sensor will cause a larger voltage change than a major A/F ratio shift, at 13:1.

I think that the whole idea of the A/F gauge is misleading. It has very limited value. If you click on "Step Into My Office...." below, you will see that I am an after-market gauge "junkie"..... but none of mine is an A/F ratio gauge.....

 

I read an article in carcraft about some new wide band o2 sensors but they are still pretty expensive, I think around $200 a piece. The problem with the stock sensors, is that they only read in a certain range. The curve looks like

___________
/
/
_____/

Where A/F ratio is the y axis and voltage is the x axis. Hence the jumping around.

Oh well text cure is not coming out right!

 

Yeah i thought mine was going to help me keep an eye on what was going on with my engine!! The joke was on me!! It's cool to look at tho!!

 

http://www.aempower.com/product_ems.asp

Look at the gauge there. It's a wide band, with a analog and a digital readout. Looks very nice, only problem is I've found one place selling it so far, and it's about $450 for the kit.

That thing in the auto craft or whatever was the Innovate LM-1, which is really nice because you can get add of stuff for logging, RPM's, ect. But the base unit for it is still $350.

 

http://www.diy-wb.com/info.htm

If you wanna save a few bucks, you can build a wide band contoler for yourself. If you go to the displays page there are several different options for displays, I like the LCD display which incoperates the wide band controler circuit with the display controler. Now if it could read two o2's at once I'd be set in checking side to side on my big block!

 

i have an AF gauge, and it really only gives you a ballpark idea at wide open throttle...otherwise yeah it does bounce all over the place...but for wide open throttle it at least gives you an idea if something were to go wrong...

 

Another way to go to make your Auto Meter AFR Meter read correctly is to get aConverter that takes a wide band input and translates it to the 0-1 volt so that the AFR Meter can read it.

The reason why the Auto Meter Kit will not work is because it is still driven from the narrow band sensor. Narrow band sensors are only good to rear 14.0-15.0 AFR. After that, it is useless.

We have used the PLX Devices Converter and it works perfectly. We have compared it to the actual AFR #s off the wide band and it is dead on.