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Thread: Should I bother with a wideband or just tune off my STFTs and AFR readings?

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    Should I bother with a wideband or just tune off my STFTs and AFR readings?

    I've been wanting to buy an Innovate LC-2 for ages now but every time I go to do so, I think "what's the point?".
    I know it'll be more accurate with the wideband, but is it worth the $250 and major headaches of installing everything? I just don't think so. What will I gain after hundreds of dollars and a lot of time, work and stress/headaches? 5kw's? 1% better fuel mileage? Big deal.

    I can already see that I'm running 11.96 A/F at WOT (now with my "new" PCM/tune) and my fuel trims are a bit on the lean side at part throttle... so (why) can't I just lean it out a bit at WOT to say 12.7 and richen it up a bit at part throttle? Wouldn't it be accurate/good enough?

    I've never been one to take shortcuts and do things the easy way and am a bit of a perfectionist, especially with my car... but all this tuning + widebands + recording runs to fill out "histograms" business, just doesn't seem worth it.. especially for a road car / daily driver / non sub-10second drag car.


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    I started off tuning my truck using the stfts, and then I bought a plx wideband. The wideband route is by far faster. I had my ve table very close without it but it took me about a week worth of logs to do so. With the wideband you can do it a lot faster and more accurate. Also plx is having a sale, there widebands can be had for 150$ right now.

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    Think of it this way, can you tune real AFR with no wideband?

    The answer is no, you can't. (on mostly all GM vehicles)

    It doesn't matter what you command for an AFR, you will never know the true AFR without a wideband. You could never tune WOT without a wideband and have any hopes of guessing your fueling 100% correct.

    You may be commanding 11.96 AFR but there is a good chance that that is not the true real time AFR that engine is seeing. The wideband is a must to dial in fueling. An exception is a stock vehicle that is barely getting tuned but if you wish to do major fueling changes, the wideband is still wanted.



    I've never been one to take shortcuts and do things the easy way and am a bit of a perfectionist, especially with my car... but all this tuning + widebands + recording runs to fill out "histograms" business, just doesn't seem worth it.. especially for a road car / daily driver / non sub-10second drag car.

    If every pro tuner said this and all dyno shops did it this way, you'd have some very very angry customers with blown up engines. Knowing your real time air fuel ratio is critical regardless of the application and regardless of how much power you are trying to produce on a modded vehicle. If you are a bit of a perfectionist, you won't be happy with how it's running without one and perhaps even more upset if something happened to the engine because you didn't buy the correct tools for tuning.

    Most widebands can be had for 170-250 bucks and are totally worth the money.
    2016 Silverado CCSB 5.3/6L80e, not as slow but still heavy.

    If you don't post your tune and logs when you have questions you aren't helping yourself.

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    Tuning Addict 5FDP's Avatar
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    Side note: commanded AFR is just that, commanded AFR. It's only telling you want the computer is asking for and not the actual air to fuel mixture in the exhaust.
    2016 Silverado CCSB 5.3/6L80e, not as slow but still heavy.

    If you don't post your tune and logs when you have questions you aren't helping yourself.

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    Thanks a lot guys.

    Regarding AFR: Damn I thought it was my actual A/F ratio.. not commanded (I knew that at one stage, then forgot when I finally started scanning my car. It even says it. "Commanded"). Then my AFR gauge is useless. Is there any way to see what my actual AFR is with just my narrowbands? And how far off commanded will my actual AFR be anyways? Why wouldn't it be 11.96 or very close to it if my PCM is commanding 11.96?

    Regarding engine safety: I don't see the big deal or how I'd blow my engine if I was to lean out my AFR or whatever table by say 1% then casually adjust it after time and checking my KR, fuel trims...

    Regarding buying a wideband controller: The cost is only about 10% of the problem. It's like a "bonus problem". Even if I was given a LC-2 for free, I'd still be 50/50 about installing it. I certainly wouldn't do it this week. The main problem(s) is welding the bung/wideband to the exhaust + doing all the wiring + recording long drives (and if I was to get pulled over, what am I supposed to tell the cop when he sees my laptop plugged up to my OBD2/HPT?) + more tuning and learning + potential problems...

    And XR650 I don't know how you can say the wideband is by far faster.. when I have to wait for the wideband controller to arrive, pull my interior apart to do the wiring for it, put my car on a hoist and weld a bung to my exhaust, try to get my wideband to work properly with my VCM Suite Standard, record long drives.....
    When/after it's all done, yeh, it's faster and better.... but how about the long journey before that? That counts. It's like saying "I bought a tv off ebay for $500" and not including (into the conversation) the $300 postage fee you had to pay + having to go to a post office during work hours to pick it up + having to take out your passenger seat to fit it in your car + a staple on the box ripping your backseat + stressing about not damaging the tv and hoping it's not already damaged... You get me?

    "I had my ve table very close without it ".. so again, why would I bother getting a wideband/controller then?

    This wideband thing almost seems like a scam.. like it's been brainwashed into us all that we HAVE to have one.
    If I can get my tune to 98.7% "perfect" with narrowbands for example, then I'm happy and don't see the need for a wideband.

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    What I'm trying to point out is..

    It seems we can get our tunes to be 99% spot on with narrowbands,
    so buying a wideband controller and going through all the headaches of installing it and whatever else to improve our tunes by 0.5% - 1% isn't worth it.


    It's not like a tuned-on-narrowbands-only tune is miles out. It's very close and only needs minor touch ups.

    Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or if you want to share your opinion..

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    The main reason I wanted a wideband was to get my maf table corrected. If your only plans are to do a tune with bolt ons then you can get by with not having a wideband imo. I bought it so I would have it already installed and my graphs set up for future power adders. And by faster I meant tuning wise. It speeds the logging and tuning sessions up

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    Wideband are for sure not a scam thing, how would anyone ever tune a cammed engine or something with a turbo/supercharger correctly without one? The narrowbands are only accurate around stoich and that's what they are designed to do. Many tuners just delete the o2 sensor altogether and tune with a wideband only. The narrowbands can't tell you real air fuel ratio.

    Figure this, with a cammed engine you may have upwards of 10-15% more air being allowed into the engine at any given time and commanded AFR may still show it's trying for 14.68 but in reality it's not even close. You could use the trims to correct the idle and light throttle area's but the narrows wouldn't be accraute for heavy throttle. Trusting the trims there would be playing with fire in my eyes.


    Without having an idea offhand what your setup is, doing very minor adjustments to fueling can be fine depending on the application you are dealing with. Nearly stock engines might not care but changing 1-2% on something with big power can change things a lot more. Again, widebands aren't needed for every single vehicle depending on application.

    All the other stuff you said is what comes with a territory, you have to pay to play. If it takes you time to get things installed for it to be correct, that is just what it's going to take. You can do all tuning roughly within the speed limit. You don't have to be going 100mph everywhere to get results for tuning and so what if it takes you a few hours worth of logging to get an engine dialed in, that would awesome if everything went that quick.
    2016 Silverado CCSB 5.3/6L80e, not as slow but still heavy.

    If you don't post your tune and logs when you have questions you aren't helping yourself.

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    Thanks again, guys.

    Quote Originally Posted by Xr650jkallen View Post
    And by faster I meant tuning wise. It speeds the logging and tuning sessions up
    Yes, but you still have to take everything else into account regarding time and "average it out in the end". It can take you 1 minute now to tune your car for example.. but you still spent 8.2 hours installing everything, driving, reading/researching... all because you bought a wideband.


    @5FDP: I said widebands are almost like a scam.. not a scam.. and meant it in terms of.. like how everyone (with "average" cars, minor mods, non-Pro MPVI interface...) is pressured/expected to buy a wideband and controller.
    And I'm not talking about worked 600+hp engines with aftermarket heads, cams, turbos... This is about my car. Internally stock LS1 with bolt-ons.


    So at this stage I'm heavily leaning towards tuning my car with my stock narrowbands, getting (very) familiar with VCM Editor / tuning.. then maybe in a year or two get a wideband controller.
    I'm already very happy with my engine.. especially after switching my PCM over with another. It was previously tuned which I didn't know until after I installed it in my car. The guy disabled all the torque/trans abuse crap (which was the first thing I wanted to do) and smoothed out the tables... I just want to slowly slowly improve it as safely + much as possible with the narrowbands.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Smith View Post
    Regarding buying a wideband controller: The cost is only about 10% of the problem. It's like a "bonus problem". Even if I was given a LC-2 for free, I'd still be 50/50 about installing it. I certainly wouldn't do it this week. The main problem(s) is welding the bung/wideband to the exhaust + doing all the wiring + recording long drives (and if I was to get pulled over, what am I supposed to tell the cop when he sees my laptop plugged up to my OBD2/HPT?) + more tuning and learning + potential problems...
    Have you considered that modifying cars might not be your cup of tea?

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    Quote Originally Posted by INIVIATE View Post
    Have you considered that modifying cars might not be your cup of tea?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRq7ADV6oAw
    Last edited by Mr. Smith; 12-13-2016 at 11:32 PM. Reason: No need to keep info about myself on display forever for the world to see after owning the twat.

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    LOL.....

    While i'm not out there modifying cars with parts from the kitchen sink, i have done more than my share of custom things.

    Good luck with life.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Smith View Post
    Last edited by Mr. Smith; 7 Hours Ago at 12:32 AM. Reason: No need to keep info about myself on display forever for the world to see after owning the twat.

    You should have let this die.... but no, you had to call me a twat.

    For anyone reading at home, this guy deleted a post talking about how awesome his car is. He used kitchen sink strainers for brake ducts and cut the IAT bung out of an old intake to use as a bolt spacer, as if that hack BS was something to be proud of. He's also contemplating using an actuator on his gas cap for his own "active aero" system. That's just the BS I remember.


    You wanna play e-badass car builder. That's cool, I guess you win, i'll stoop to your level.

    Here are 2 of the many vehicles I've built from the ground up.

    The first one is a mud truck. I took planetary axles out of a forklift and grafted them onto the center section of a deuce and a half axle. Axletech axle shafts in the deuce carrier. I completely fabricated my own "C" for the knuckle to bolt to. I made the entire sub frame, including both front and rear 4 links. I made all 3 driveshafts in my garage on my lathe. I designed and built the hydraulic system to run the rear steer. This truck eventually got a 24 valve Cummins and 545 Allison transmission, although it still had the 6.0 in this pic...




    Here is another one, just to show some variety... It's a 68 Dodge sweptline. Except I put it on a complete buick roadmaster chassis. It ran and drove like a buick roadmaster, yet looked every bit of an old farm truck. This truck would stroll down the interstate at 80+ like it was nothing. I put the roadmaster gauges in the dodge dash, so you had speedometer, fuel level, turn signals, etc.




    So take your kitchen sink mods and shove them up your ass....

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    HAHAHAHAHA!!
    Do you use those redneck contraptions on/for your parents farm?
    Oh boy.. not even gonna bother.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Smith View Post
    HAHAHAHAHA!!
    Do you use those redneck contraptions on/for your parents farm?
    Oh boy.. not even gonna bother.

    Shucks. I was looking forward to you showing off your JB weld skills.

    Oh well, have a nice life.

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    Quote Originally Posted by INIVIATE View Post
    Shucks. I was looking forward to you showing off your JB weld skills.

    Oh well, have a nice life.
    I'm sure I can do a better job with JB Weld then you can with a welder.

    All the best with the farm, kid.

    Btw,
    My car > all of your redneck farm contraptions combined

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Smith View Post
    I'm sure I can do a better job with JB Weld then you can with a welder.

    All the best with the farm, kid.

    Btw,
    My car > all of your redneck farm contraptions combined

    Feel free to show that gem of a car off.....

    I know i'd sure like to see it. It might give me something to strive for in life. I'm especially interested in the kitchen sink strainer brake ducting. I'm sure that's some amazing work.

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    Didn't read ^


    Aye mods,

    Why is this disrespectful pos brat allowed to post 5 bs comments in my thread and derail + ruin it, but I'm told to cool it after a couple posts in his (including 1 helpful post)?
    Do I need nosey "MikeM173" to come here and rant about threads getting locked and shyt that has nothing to do with him? Is that it?
    I'm sure if I done what he done here (especially after just signing up like he did), I would've been told to stfu by everyone and then banned. Somehow this scumbag gets away with it.

  19. #19
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    So, you're not going to post that sweet car?

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by INIVIATE View Post
    So, you're not going to post that sweet car?
    To impress a 19yo pos? What for?