mastacox

I meant installing a wideband O2 sensor and the associated gauge to go with it. AFAIK wideband O2 sensors are pretty expensive, and so are the gauges for them, a narrow-band AFR gauge is only like $70. Your engine wouldn't use your new wideband O2 sensor, but the gauge would. Where would one of these go, anyway?

4RunnerFever

midiwall

Ahh... okay, yeah.

You put a wideband up in front of the cat, usually around the same general area as your front O2 sensor now. Mine is sitting right across from the stock front O2 sensor and angled a bit down. It's not ideal since the exhaust path ends up a bit blocked, but there's a rule-of-thumb floating around that the front O2 (and/or wideband) should be about 10" in front of the front cat. I'm not sure where that number comes from, it may even be a bit of folklore.

mastacox

So you actually did install a wideband sensor and gauge... is it really THAT much better than a narrow band, or should narrow band be good enough?

mastacox

I feel for you man...

But worry not, it's going to a good home

4RunnerFever

midiwall

(damn, you picked up on that...)

Yeah, I was sucked into buying an LM-1. $350 later, I can say I think I've used it three times in the last 18 months. I also have the add-on 5 channel datalogger, that's another $80.

Yes, it's "cool" to see your real A/FR in an instant, but if you're in closed loop, the A/FR will ALWAYS be 14.7:1 or migrating to that point thanks to the ECU. So, you're looking at a $350 tool to help you tune at WOT. Fair 'nuff. But if you have an EGT, and once you feel the effects of leaning out up top, then you can do a pretty good job without it. I said this in another thread recently, but I can get pretty close to 12:1 up top just with the EGT and my ear. I've validated my settings a couple of times with the LM-1. The effect of being lean or being too hot at WOT is pretty dramatic.


The datalogger is cool btw, but it's not really worth $450 (LM-1 + logger).


side note - I don't keep the sensor in the pipe, as you've pointed out, it's expensive to replace so why expose it to the heat and gases if you're not using it?

mastacox

So have you decided which car you're getting to replace it? Just curious...

I saw you were looking at something like a Toyota Yaris or Honda Fit. When I was looking at new cars a month or so ago I was looking at a couple of Honda's and they were super pushy about making me look at a Fit. I was like "look at me, do I look like a subcompact guy? I'm 6'4"!" The guy said they were suprisingly roomy inside and I just told him if I was buying a Honda it would be a certified Accord, end of story. I think I hurt his feelings

Glad I didn't do that though, granted it would get better mileage than the 4Runner but this 4Runner's going to be WAY more fun

mastacox

LOL sorry didn't mean to ruin your secret

Yup, just was curious is all, but I think I'll be gtg with a narrow band gauge and EGT gauge.

midiwall

it's not that... Everytime I bash the wideband approach I wait for people to pounce on me about how it's the only way to tune, then I get into a back&forth about it all.


I got one more piece that you may want to look for on eBay...

I paid $50 for one of these. It's AWESOME for the money, and it'll work on a narrow sensor. It's not dead accurate, but I've confirmed it to be good enough to get you in the safe end of the ballpark at WOT and save you $300 in the process.

You want this 'cause there are ups and downs about the Westach A/FR. The upside is that it's balanced to smooth out the wide swings that happen in closed loop; the downside is that the balancing makes it slow to react at WOT.

mastacox

I see... I'll look into it, nice and cheap which is good. Maybe I could get Westach to reduce/remove the damping effect in a semi-custom gauge...

4RunnerFever

Well . . . I'm only 5'10" so any Ferrari or Maserati would be a good fit for me

Looking most seriously at Scion Xa and Subaru Impreza. This will be a big change for me but I'm trying to remodel my lifestyle a bit away from cars and towards my kids. I simply don't have time to play with the car anymore, plus 30+mpg (for the Scion at least) will be helpful.

I've got a BMW R1150GS Motorbike so at least I'll have a fun vehicle to play with.

mastacox

Sweet...

Yeah I looked at a Subaru Legacy GT and a WRX, both were fun drives (the Legacy especially, and now the Spec B comes with the STI's 6-speed -DROOL-) but the WRX had kind of too much wind noise, and they both only got about 25mpg.

I also looked at the VW Jetta's. I was about two inches away from buying a Package 1 TDI (Turbo-Diesel, 45-50mpg!) but decided against it for a while at least. Very nice cars and pretty cheap, around 24k very well equipped. I wanted to avoid the immediate new car depreciation, so maybe when these start coming off of 2 or 3-year leases...

mastacox

LOL by the way, I ended up ruining my secret and telling her

I'm not very good at the whole keeping a good surpise secret thing I guess, I'm pretty sure my head would have exploded if I tried much longer though That or I would have gotten an ulcer

Oh well. Fortunately she's got the need for speed and off-roading just as much as I do.

EDIT: or is it unfortunate...

midiwall

I wanted to pass along an update on this for the sake of the archives...

I called IPT this morning... $3550 to rebuild my tranny to the point of being bulletproof for 400bhp. That includes the valve body work. Add $222 each way for shipping coast-to-coast (via Old Dominion). So, $4000 plus the cost of ATF and paying a buddy for his time in helping with the swap.

Holy crap.

mastacox

Yikes, there's some $$$ for the 4Runner...

I'm definitely going with the VB upgrade ASAP to avoid this situation

4RunnerFever

You were so excited on the phone, I can't believe you lasted this long. She is gonna love the sunroof

mastacox

Yeah, that's a must, my 4Runner has one now too... I was looking at a 4Runner on a lot in Santa Fe without one (it wasn't any good anyway, had the "center diff lock" and a bad color) and I just couldn't bring myself to seriously consider it.

mastacox

Well Mark, after reading more and looking over Gadget's U-Tune guide, I'm going wideband after all (you have to pay to play, right?). I don't really like the LM-1 because it's this huge ugly square box looking thing that you can't mount cleanly, but I REALLY like this one:

PLX M-250 Oxygen Sensor Controller with 52mm Gauge Combo

The genius part of this system is it has a nice gauge I can put in a dual pod with the boost, and I can completely replace the narrowband sensor with the wideband one because the control unit has an analog 0-1V narrowband output for the ECU. This way, I just use the new wideband O2 sensor and don't have to install a new bung or anything (at least in theory, I have to confirm this and a few other issues with URD). It looks like this may be able to save me some money as well for the FTC because it might not need the narrowband signal conditioner. We will see I suppose, I'm in contact with URD about such things.

Along with that I'll be getting the OBDII BR-3 Scan Tool. This way, I can tune the engine no problem. Since I have no experience in tuning these engines, and don't know what 12:1 "feels" like, I figure to be safe and know what I'm doing I can just get these tools, go with gadget's guide, and as I start to get a feel for things will be able to go from a better starting point.

Yee haw, this is going to be awseome!!!

mastacox

Ok, so i just got a crazy idea, let me know if I'm off-base here:

I'm going to own this 4Runner for a long time, and I will be constantly upgrading here and there, but I'm trying to make sure I don't buy something that will end up getting replaced later, so here is my issue:

I will be going wideband to help in safe engine tuning, along with an OBD-II interface, but I'm not going with an EGT gauge yet because the probe will be a pain to install, but it seems like it is still on the list. The problem is, I will have no place to install the EGT gauge because I'll already have a 2-gauge pod with an AFR gauge and boost gauge... so... here's the crazy idea:

What about the PLX R-300 or R-500? Expensive I know, but:

1) I don't need to worry about places to fit gauges anymore, because they supports 6 inputs, so other gauges I might want (such as tranny temp) won't need someplace to go. It can also theoretically take the place of the boost gauge, meaning it can fit where the boost gauge is now...

2) The R-500 has a 2-axis accelerometer, which by itself is cool because it can be a little on-board "dyno," but here's the really interesting idea: the accelerometer can also serve as an inclinometer off-road, just instead of degrees it will be in g's. Even more functionality...

3) The R-300/500 both have data-logging and stuff, but I doubt I would use it that much. It is there though...

So here's the thing: a wideband conversion from PLX costs about $350 (wideband sensor, processor, and AFR gauge). The R-300 costs $430. The R-500 would end up a about $550. For the R-300 though that's only really only $80 more, and the R-500 is only $200 more (the price of two gauges), for as many gauges as I could want all I would need is the senders... without the hassle of trying to hide them all over the place. I'm thinking this R-300 computer is sounding like a pretty good deal now, even the R-500 is pretty cool with the accelerometer, and I'm going to probably want these gauges (eventully anyway):

Boost
AFR
EGT
Transmission Temp
Voltage
Oil Pressure

There's 6 gauges, which would be EVERYWHERE, but with this computer just one little screen where the boost gauge is now... hmmm. This may be what I need to do...

EDIT: Ok so I see the R series computers actually have 2 frequency inputs (speed, tach) and four voltage inputs, so I would only be able to use four gauges with them. Still, if I keep the boost gauge and do a separate voltage gauge, that's not a lot of space for four gauges...