Recomended O2s

[krunchss]

Jerry actually makes some recomendations in his tuning notebook, but he didn't include the setup that I should be running in a few weeks

How do people form opinions on what a particular car's O2s should be?

Anyway, would like to hear what the recomended O2 that I should be shooting for this summer with my liquid intercooled turbo setup Engine itself is a stock L36 but do have better exhaust flow with P&P OEM manifolds.

Krunch

[JerryH]

Based on your mods, my friend.

A turbo and (soon to be) intercooled setup like yours should be ballparked at around 915-930 if you don't have a wideband (which I know you don't have... lol). After that, KR is your guide. If you can run 915 without KR, that will net you a little more power, but if your car needs 930 to be KR free, don't feel bad about it.

[krunchss]

Just the man I was looking for

I'm still chipping away at the install and hope to have it on the road in another few weeks. Can't wait to see how it works. Starting VE tuning as soon as I burn out the 6 month old tank of gas in my car (Which I am going to use to tune my IFR / DIC with so it doesn't totally go to waste )

Krunch

[JerryH]

Are you running the 42.5s or 65s in your car, I cannot recall?

[krunchss]

42.5#ers in my car

Krunch

[JerryH]

I think we played with it, and you should be pretty close, no? Only improvement would be for proper DIC display of MPG, not for performance. My DIC is pretty close using the standard ratio while upping from 36 to 42.5's. I had to make very slight adjustments becuase it was initially showing about 1 MPG too high. compared to the distance measured by GPS and fuel used.

[98gtp]

turbo car with no WB, Brilliant!!

[JerryH]

Puhleeze, lets not go there. 90% of all turbo cars run without them, and quite successfully.

[ct06gto]

If you could afford to mod your car and pay for a tuning suite then you could afford a wideband. For me, i cant afford not to have a wideband.

[JerryH]

It all depends on what the user wants. I agree that a WB has it's place, but if the user has the tune done for him, and uses his tuner to touch things up, its not the end of the world.

I know that people here think that WBs are absolutely needed under ALL cases for ALL cars but I got by without one for years, up until just a short while ago. Personally, I don't see what all the hoop-lah is about. Yes I know how to use it, and all, and I know the advantages... but again... to get to 90% of where you want to be, it can easily be done without one.

KR is a great friend in helping you get quite close and anyone who has tuned with and without a WB (I can give you 3 poeple on this forum alone, and more to come!) will all tell you the same thing... commanded results are within 0.1 to 0.2 of WB readings.

The three people now are (if you want to know):
Myself
JohnH
Foghorn

All with pretty well modded cars that push them quite hard. I am sure there are more, but none that I can say are here. I do know a few more L67s that are getting WBs that will also chime in their thoughts as well later. I am also very confident that their results will not differ much as well.

[98gtp]

It all depends on what the user wants. I agree that a WB has it's place, but if the user has the tune done for him, and uses his tuner to touch things up, its not the end of the world.

I know that people here think that WBs are absolutely needed under ALL cases for ALL cars but I got by without one for years, up until just a short while ago. Personally, I don't see what all the hoop-lah is about. Yes I know how to use it, and all, and I know the advantages... but again... to get to 90% of where you want to be, it can easily be done without one.

KR is a great friend in helping you get quite close and anyone who has tuned with and without a WB (I can give you 3 poeple on this forum alone, and more to come!) will all tell you the same thing... commanded results are within 0.1 to 0.2 of WB readings.

The three people now are (if you want to know):
Myself
JohnH
Foghorn

All with pretty well modded cars that push them quite hard. I am sure there are more, but none that I can say are here. I do know a few more L67s that are getting WBs that will also chime in their thoughts as well later. I am also very confident that their results will not differ much as well.

and i've also seen cars that i've tuned to dead on 11.5 and put the stock NB back in and reads in the mid 800's, and i've seen others that reads high 900's

not to mention it takes me 4-5 runs and i've got the fueling in line.

Simply put tuning without a wideband is guessing.

[JerryH]

and i've also seen cars that i've tuned to dead on 11.5 and put the stock NB back in and reads in the mid 800's, and i've seen others that reads high 900's

If you are reading 800s and not seeing KR on a forced induction engine, you have a bigger issue with your tune other than your fueling.

How about we try this new technique... we suggest something once, and let the people decide if they want to do it or not. Insulting and being obnoxious about it is not going to entice them to do it "your" way whether you are right or wrong, it just makes that person look like a 12 year old where we get into the old "yours is bigger than mine" thing. Let's get over it... the WB is not the holy grail of tuning. There is a lot more to a tune than the last 10% up top, and for that 90% I could EASILY live without one... indeed I have for quite a long time.

Without a WB, I've "guessed" my car to 39MPG, hit 263KPH on the top end and done a 13.5 on 87 octane. I'd say that I and a lot of others seem to be pretty good at guessing, I suppose.

[krunchss]

Thank-you for your productive comment

Now leave

Krunch

turbo car with no WB, Brilliant!!

[krunchss]

No, I don't think we played with the IFR at all actually. I'm just a perfectionist that's all. I just want to make sure that it is correct (also with a GPS) instead of getting part way through a tune and then changing it which would skew everything I had done up to that point. I figure it's a good thing to do with a tank of gas that's over 6 months old.

Krunch

I think we played with it, and you should be pretty close, no? Only improvement would be for proper DIC display of MPG, not for performance. My DIC is pretty close using the standard ratio while upping from 36 to 42.5's. I had to make very slight adjustments becuase it was initially showing about 1 MPG too high. compared to the distance measured by GPS and fuel used.

[krunchss]

I can afford to mod my car, I can afford to buy a wideband, I can afford to buy lots of things. But you shouldn't buy them just because you can afford them.

When the day comes that I feel that a wideband will be benneficial to me, and it's a worthwhile purchase, I'll buy one. I don't see the benefit of using a wideband for IFR or VE tuning, do you?

Krunch

If you could afford to mod your car and pay for a tuning suite then you could afford a wideband. For me, i cant afford not to have a wideband.

[ct06gto]

I can afford to mod my car, I can afford to buy a wideband, I can afford to buy lots of things. But you shouldn't buy them just because you can afford them.

When the day comes that I feel that a wideband will be benneficial to me, and it's a worthwhile purchase, I'll buy one. I don't see the benefit of using a wideband for IFR or VE tuning, do you?

Krunch

My point was for $199 you could have a wideband and know what your actual afr is. You wont find many people here that will agree with using 02's for wot if you find anyone at all (other than Jerry). Your narrowband is accurate to +/- 1 afr from stoich, After that you are out of the range of the sensor. There is a book by Greg Banish (eficalibrator on this site and a oem calibrator) and in the oxygen sensor section he states that he has seen dozens of blown motors due to people trusting stock narrowbands. im not trying to get into a pissing match but a wideband is a must.
You stated you dont see the benifit of using a wideband for ve tuning. For me thats the only way to do it. Do a search for open loop tuning. Its so much easier to log afr error and copy and paste data into the editor than doing a bunch of ve tunes using ltft and waiting in between tunes for the trims to learn before doing it again.

[JerryH]

Let's keep it polite, Dwayne. Some have a strong bias, but their hearts are in the right places. We just need to let them know ONCE is enough (an attitude I will follow myself as well)... lol

What I am saying is that you can get close without a WB. And what people fail to realize is that there is more to a car tune than just that 90-100% TP range. I drive my car WAY more often at 7-10% TP than 75-100%. 90% of my tuning is in the 0-50% TP becuase above that, to tune for the upper sections... is uber-easy!!

The challenge is to get everything under that nailed down to perfection so that you maximize the complete range, not a fraction of your potential, and this is also what takes more time to accomplish. I have a strong feeling that people do not invest near the same amount of time as I do in this range. Either they do not understand the benefits, or simply don't care about anything more than WOT performance. I respect that and say... to each their own.

I focus a LOT of attention in that range 0-50% range and have learned to work around the fact of not having a wideband. We are talking at least 5 years of doing it that way, if not more. A person can get a great deal of info accumulated in that time and get to know one's car quite well.

As far as my new WB setup, I have done no more than one single test at WOT for about 15 seconds so far just to see how commanded A/Fs compare to WB A/Fs and how that compares to my O2s. Maybe it wasn't heated up enough or not a long enough run, but the results were damn close with the WB what the NB and commanded A/F was showing before.

As far as the book from Greg... I bought it, read it... no offence, but for me it had very little in it that is usable to us GM V6 people in the real world, short of some basic theory and good formulas. In the end, it did not help make me a better tuner, did not give me any additional info that I either already did not know or that was relevant to my L67 tuning.

As I stated before, I understand the value of a WB. It is in my car as I type this... but there are many ways to skin a cat, many ways to get to the same goals. Not all of them need absolutely come from the same methods.

[krunchss]

No problem Jerry, I'm not here to insult anyone, but I can give it just as well as I can take it. I can have a nice conversation with anyone, but anyone speaking in an insulting tone should receive the same.

Let me just clarify, I am not against WB, I just do not fully understand them yet thats all. I have gone from literally "0" tuning knowledge to at least "Some" in a very short period of time. To date I have read and am fairly comfortable with the tuning concepts of VE and MAF tuning, although due to other problems, to date, I have not been able to nail down either. I am hoping this will all change and soon as my car comes out of the garage in the next few weeks....I hope. Been working on a water-to-air IC setup all winter on and off, hopefully have it done soon and would need to start tuning over again anyway for it.

Bottom line is I have an obscene amount of information and tuning concepts to digest already, why should I complicate it more with a WB right now? I feel it's better to put what I have learned into action and learn from that. Now as my understanding increases of tuning, maybe I will see the value in a WB, maybe I won't. All I can say right now is I don't have enough knowledge of what a WB is, and what it will do for me to see the value in it...That's the polite answer. All this WB talk to me right now is kinda like someone asking me when I am I putting the roof on my house, before the walls are even up! Make sense?

Krunch

[krunchss]

To go back to what Jerry is saying, Jerry's concept of tuning, and the areas he tunes sound very similar to my opinions of tuning. Am I interested in the best WOT I can get? Absolutely, some day I hope to take it down a track just to see what it's capable of. Once I do, iron out any issues I see, and that's it. I will not be on a hunt t squeeze every last HP out of my car. I am more interested in a safe running engine than I am of .1 or .2 on a 1/4 mile. I am more interested in fuel economy as well. Jerry's claim is 39 mpg? Well I want to see if I can beat him in highway mileage and hit 40mpg. I think I might have an advantage in this area having a turbo vs. a supercharger. Do I know for sure? No, but I would like to be able to say, "400 hp and 40mpg" If you read my sig, the stock L36 has 3.29 gears. Why do you think I went to 2.93 gears? Because a couple more mpg are more important to me that couple of tenths on the 1/4. My car will be plenty fast for me, it will spend WAY more time cruising on the highway than it will on the track. Google map my location and Jerry's location and let me tell you that I met Jerry IRL last summer, when I was only 1/2 way BACK to my home from my road trip...In this very car listed in my sig.

Krunch

[eficalibrator]

Puhleeze, lets not go there. 90% of all turbo cars run without them, and quite successfully.

...and 100% of the factory tuned ones were done using a wideband. It has been scientifically proven beyond a doubt that narrowband HEGOs have a significantly large swing in output voltage with changes in temperature at the same "rich" lambda. Since you haven't a clue what the shape of this dependency curve is, or even where along it you're operating (your current operation point will move during a WOT run!), you are at a serious disavdantage when attempting to GUESS at actual air-fuel ratios.

The gasoline doesn't know that it's running in your L67 engine. All of the same eaxct rules apply whether it's a Honda, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, or GM engine. The methods in the book are the exact same I've used on all of the above. There really isn't anything all that special about GM V6's that requires a completely different approach.

Nobody is going to force you to do things the right way. Just don't come back here looking for sympathy when you smoke-check that engine because you thought the narrowband HEGOs were reliable at WOT. ...but what do I know? I'm just some guy who does this for a living.