I have dynojet Wideband commander that I have been using for a few years and love it. Now I was just messing around and I stumbled on Innovative's website's forum. On there was post regarding how there Widebands are much more accurate because the offer "free air calibration" while sensors such as the AEM, PLX and Dynojet do not. Is this true-so I could be getting false readings all along? I need a pretty accurate reading since my car is FI. What are your thoughts opinions? Thanks!
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02 C5 Z06
8.8@160
well i have the LC-1 by Innovative and can tell you that if i mess up the free-air cal, i'll get readings that aren't right... i'm not sure how a sensor could give you an accurate reading w/o a "known constant" (like what o2 is, hence "free air" cal)... so i don't know how the other ones even do it.
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Free Air calibration is a gimick in my opinion. Sensor wear out, so when an O2 sensor is recalibrated in free air ... what you are doing is just changing the scale of the range. So if your sensor is contaminated to 13.0, you now make that contamination point read as 14.7 and base everything off of that. High end wideband sensors do not have a "free air calibration", because when a sensor starts to fail you need to replace it. Personally, I wouldn't trust calibration equipment that needs to be re-adjusted as it's tolerance becomes wider. Much like micrometer (vernier calipers), once they are out of range, you discard it and get a new certified good one ... and inspect it (via precise measuring blocks) every so often.Not just zero it out when you have it closed, which may read .0100" on the display before zeroing it out, then measure critical components.
Innovative is the only one that uses that IIRC, PLX uses permanent controlled calibration, there should be no reason to have calibrate a sensor....all you're doin is following the tolerance drift..
the key with ones like the LM1/LC1...is that the free air calibration only needs to be done once...after that..if you have to do it again..then you need to replace the sensor
the LC1 and LM1 can use either the Bosch or the NTK sensor
the reason they have you do a free air calibration is because each sensor is slightly different and the device needs to know which sensor you are using..
without having a magic button on it..it figures out which one you have by doing the free air calibration
-Scott -
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