AFR Gauge

[czakky]

I keep toying with buying a cheap-ish AFR Gauge, but the one thing that keeps holding me back is the sensor mounting.

According to the “Innovate” website (manufacturer of said system) sensors must be mounted 24”(61cm) from exhaust port and NOT at a crossover.

For me the easiest mounting location would be at the exhaust x-over.

 

Is this just to avoid mounting near catalytic converters?

 

Anybody have any experience with these?

 

Here’s a link to the model I’m interested in.

https://www.innovatemotorsports.com/products/mtxl_plus.php

[guzzigary]

The 04 Lemans that I lost in the Great Garage Fire of 2015 had one.

 

Installed by the PO it was useful for tuning and entertaining to watch.

 

IIRC it was plumbed to the bung on the Stucchi crossover.

[68C]

Like all extra gauges it means less time looking down the road where you are going and so adds to the usual dangers of riding. AFR gauges take a little time to stabilise after a throttle change so you tend to look at it longer than a glance at a speedometer. AFR is best logged and then perused later. I fitted one for a while, screwed into the factory O2 sensor port in the standard crossover.

[czakky]

Ok sounds like they read accurately at the x-over. Safety is a concern for sure. My plan would be to only temporarily mount it, once I’m happy I would remove it.

[Meinolf]

Hi,

 

I keep toying with buying a cheap-ish AFR Gauge, ....

 

I don't want to disillusion you, and you are not mentioning which goal you'd be pursuing with adding a AFR display, but a cheapish AFR Gauge would be useless entertainment at best and dangerous distraction at worst.

 

Take a look at this thread, https://wildguzzi.com/forum/index.php?topic=93758.0, basically a continuance of my 15M logging and BIN optimization in the past on the V11 and Jackal. Unless you are willing and capable of logging road data, analyzing it and put it into revised BIN a display won't be of any use.

 

And mounting the sensor on the crossover will make whatever you might see even more useless.

 

Cheers

Meinolf

[68C]

The goal!

I soon realised how little I really knew about the correct fueling of an engine when playing with the MyEcu and later with Guzzidiag. It was fairly easy to alter the map, and to 'demand' a specific AFR using a closed loop system. The problem of course was what AFR, the stoimetric ideal does not work in the real world, every engine and situation requires its own setting, I was just never clever enough to know what was, a bit like hunting in the woods when you don't know what to shoot at, pigeon, rat or tree.

[Meinolf]

Hi,

 

...and to 'demand' a specific AFR using a closed loop system...

 

Pray tell, did you "demand" a specific AFR on the 15RC? Or was it MyECU? 

 

 

The problem of course was what AFR, the stoimetric ideal does not work in the real world, every engine and situation requires its own setting

 

I hear you. The approach I eventually used was to log MAP and create a target AFR table, based on the relative pressure, covering all breakpoints. The general logic was that max. power Lambda (0.86) is not needed in those load areas where the throttling loss is higher than 10% or so. 

 

https://ibb.co/gOTjka

 

And this approach works quite well.

 

Cheers

Meinolf

[gstallons]

There are some valuable / important members on this site & you're one of them .

[czakky]

Meinolf is full of great info for sure. Feeling less and less motivated to go this route.

[czakky]

How did you come to these target numbers Meinolf?

Dyno?

Seat of the pants?

[Meinolf]

Hi,

 

How did you come to these target numbers Meinolf?
Dyno?
Seat of the pants?

 

neither.

 

The targets were developed based on several factors.

 

- the highest power is developed at Lamba 0.86

- the best efficiency is developed at Lambda 1.05

- the min./max. correlation of NOx, CO and HC in relation to Lambda

- the degree to which a given engine (at that time it was the V11 and the Jackal, currently a Norge 1200 2V, a Aprilia Mana, a Aprilia RST 1000, a Yamaha GTS1000 and a Yamaha MT01 are being logged and tuned)

- the throttling loss as measured with a MAP sensor

- histograms at which breakpoints and load areas > 90% of my actual road driving happens

- considerations how the effect of ignition in relation to Lambda could be optimized. While the speed of mixture burning is quite constant regardless of Lambda, the deviation of actual mixture ignition in the combustion chamber varies +/- 20%.

 

All of the above mentioned engines use a alpha/n-model, the accessability of the ECU in regards to reading/writing the BIN varies a lot. The Guzzi's, thanks to Beards development of the Guzzidiag software and the community effort to develop XDFs make them the best tunable engines. The Mana also uses a 5AM, currently the BIN code is under investigation, based on the analysis of the One and Two Lambda BINs used in the CARC models (https://www.apriliaforum.com/forums/showthread.php?336210-ECU-tuning-Looking-for-information), so this comes next. The RST1000 follows (TuneECU) and the GTS1000/MT01 can only be optimized with 3rd party products (Powercommander V).

 

Using a MAP sensor connected to the data logging devices, first LM-2 from Innovate (but that is crap, both device and customer support) and now ZT-2 from Zeitronix (much more stable, but suffers from TPS being logged as integer %-values which is unusable in the critical low load areas, and customer support is also poor), the MAP was logged. Combining the manifold pressure with the histograms of the most used TPS/rpm area and considering the relationship of emission (NOx, HC, CO) depending on Lambda the targets were set. Peripheral considerations were the suitability of the given engine to low/high Lambda (the V11/Jackal are not enjoyable engines with a Lambda > 1.0, the Norge and Mana handle it very well) and the move from one target value to another, say from Lambda 0.98 to 1.

 

I don't use dyno's (more power has lowest priority), the results are judged on seats of pants and fuel efficiency. Seats of pants is most influenced by sync'ed Lambdas on both cylinders (the stock BINs are so bad you wouldn't believe it) and smooth transitions from one breakpoint to the next, especially on the low load areas, say

 

Correcting trim tables disregarding the laws of physics, such as ambient air p/T tables, is another aspect of the work. It's really astounding that Marelli and it's customers (Guzzi, Aprilia, Ducati) are continuing to use correction tables just plain wrong - and that's not rocket science.

 

That's just scratching the surface, let's stop here before I get rolling....

 

Cheers

Meinolf

[czakky]

Let me read that a few more times....

[Meinolf]

Hi,

 

I'm just about to leave for a road trip. I'll post a couple of pictures explaining the respective topics in 10 days or so. If there is interest in more details.

 

Cheers

Meinolf

[68C]

 

 

Pray tell, did you "demand" a specific AFR on the 15RC? Or was it MyECU?

 

 

I used the MyEcu.

[czakky]

Definitely interested.