Air fuel mixture guages...

[southerner88 10]

Hi all,

 

first up, sorry if this is in the wrong place but Im looking at getting an Air Fuel mixture gauage to go with my turbo gauage for my VRT build. First place ive looked is good old ebay. The part that confuses me most here is that there are listings from £15 right up to £150, is there a massive difference between them? or will a basic £15 do the job of display mixture as accurate as the £150 one?

 

any help would be great, thanks peeps

[Kevin Bacon 5]

You want a Wideband one. Cheap narrowband ones with just a row of 10 leds are utterly pointless.

[southerner88 10]

So is it a "you get what you pay for" with these gauges? been recommended getting a innovate lc-1 which after some research is a wideband one, but cant see a VW specific one, if there is one or if they are universal?

[VR6 Gar 10]

Universal.You have to weld a bung onto the downpipe around where it joins the exhaust. It works via a probe that looks like a Lambda sensor. I use the Inovate MTX-L.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I don't like the Innovate LC-1. It was very inaccurate on my VR6 turbo and the whole having to manually calibrate it was a nonsense. Maybe things have changed in recent years but I had good results with PLX Devices.

 

You just want a simple 0-5V linear wideband, 0V = 10 AFR, 5V = 20AFR. It's all you need :)

 

Narrowband ones just bounce up and down constantly and tell you anything meaningful.

 

Wideband tells you the actual AFR under part throttle and full throttle.

[southerner88 10]

Would second hand units be as good? What would you need to look for with a second hand one?

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Yeah should be fine so long as the lambda probe is in good condition, which you can't tell until you wire it all up and test it unfortunately. Replacement bosch probes for most kits can be had for about £50, so not mega pricey.

 

You'll have a source a weld-on lambda boss separately if you buy one s/hand though, but again, cheap and easy to get.