Tune In, Turn On, and Make Power

With Innovate's Air-Fuel Ratio Meter, Tuning Just Got Easier

By Jeff Smith
Photography: Jeff Smith
It used to be that tuning a hot street engine or race
motor was one of those black arts that only those
carburetor and ignition wizards seem to understand.
When (and why) an engine needed more or less fuel
was a gray area that only those guys who seemed to
be plugged into the engine could figure out. Well
gang, air-fuel ratio tuning just got a whole bunch This is the LM-1 kit
supplied by Innovate
easier.
Technology. The digital
There's nothing new about plugging in a sensor into meter box is supplied
the exhaust and reading the free oxygen level and with a fresh 9-volt and
establishing an air-fuel ratio based on the sensor's also comes with a
voltage readout. The OEM's have been doing that cigarette lighter source
since the early '80s. But these sensors were designed that supplies the power
to be accurate only around 14.7:1 air fuel ratio. for the heater portion of
Attempting to build a "gauge" that could accurately the sensor. The kit also
deliver air-fuel ratio around 12.5 to 13:1 was comes with a 10-foot
challenging and usually inaccurate. Several serial cable to connect
companies tried and the result was a slew of the LM-1 to your laptop
to download recorded
inexpensive lean-rich indicators that were only really
data.
accurate around 14.7:1. The rest of the time, the best
these gauges could do was tell you that you were "richer" than 14.7 at wide-open throttle (WOT), which
wasn't very useful. These gauges were all built around what were called narrow-band exhaust gas
oxygen (EGO) sensors.

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The key to this whole
Supercharge any car (sm) system is the Bosch LSU
Up to 35 HP, 31% MPG, street legal $35 code 4. Free 1-800-758-2017 4.2 wide-band oxygen
www.spiralmax.com sensor. This looks just
like a normal oxygen
sensor, but in fact is far
more accurate in air-fuel
A few years later, companies like Bosch and NTK began building wide-band ratios from 9:1 to 22:1.
oxygen sensors that could accurately deliver dependable air-fuel ratio readings This sensor is designed
only for unleaded fuel.
Use of leaded fuel will
permanently damage the
sensor. Replacement
sensors are only $50
from Innovate.
in useful ranges for the performance tuner. The problem was these sensors were verrry expensive. But
with advanced technology and time, these prices have come down, making a handheld device for
reading and data-logging air-fuel ratio finally affordable. Enter Innovate Engineering with an air-fuel
ratio meter for a mere $350.
Innovate Engineering has created a slick, digital handheld air-fuel ratio meter that can also data-log the
information that will give you immediate and accurate drive-time results that
you can use to help tune your engine. The system uses a five-wire Bosch
heated oxygen sensor that is intended for use only with unleaded fuels to create
the air-fuel ratio readout. At this time, the system is capable of data-logging
only the air-fuel ratio, but by the time you read this, Innovate should have
released auxiliary components that will allow you to data-log several other
inputs, including rpm, coolant or inlet air temperature, and pressures.
The lower right
How's It Work?
connection is for the
If you study the included graphs (6A and 6B), you should be able to see that cigarette lighter, the
the narrow band oxygen sensor is really only accurate at 14.7:1 air-fuel ratio. middle one connects the
This is because that's the stoichiometric air-fuel ratio where all three major sensor to the box while
components of emissions--hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO), and the upper left connection
nitrogen oxides (NOx)--are at their combined lowest point. This is where the is a serial port connector
new-car companies need their engines to run at part-throttle both for emission to either a laptop or your
and fuel mileage reasons. That's why these narrow-band sensors were built this home computer. Since
way. the LM-1 is portable, you
These sensors operate by measuring the free oxygen can bring the LM-1 to
content in the exhaust gas and converting that amount your home computer and
hook it up in a matter of
of oxygen into a specific voltage. As you can see from
minutes to plot the data.
the graph, a narrow-band sensor will deliver a 0.45-
volt reading when the air-fuel ratio is at 14.7:1.
Because the voltage line is so steep, the higher and
lower air-fuel ratios create tiny voltage changes in
this kind of sensor, making this type of sensor We hooked the LM-1 up
notoriously inaccurate at air-fuel ratios on either side to Tim Moore's small-
of 14.7. block carbureted
Eventually, the new-car companies realized that it Chevelle for some quick
was possible to build a sensor that was capable of testing. Wide-open
throttle runs produced
accurately measuring oxygen levels roughly in a
air-fuel ratios between
range from 9:1 to 18:1. This is evident with the graph 12.3:1 and 12.8:1, so it
that shows both a wider voltage band from 0.95 to was a little on the rich
2.11 volts (with 1.47 volts at 14.7 air-fuel ratio) while side. Here the A/F ratio is
the slope of the curve is not nearly as steep, meaning 13.7:1.
that this type of sensor is far more accurate in
measuring air-fuel ratio within the range of gasoline-fed engines. These ratios
will change when using fuels like methanol or propane. We'll limit our
discussion to gasoline-fed engines.
Best Power
We mentioned the stoichiometric air-fuel ratio (14.7:1) that is the ideal ratio for
lowest emissions, but this isn't the best ratio for power. It used to be that 12.5:1
was considered the best power ratio, but with improved combustion chambers
and hotter ignition systems, the ideal now is around 12.8:1 to 13.2:1. This is This is a data-log trace of
roughly 13 parts of air to one part fuel. It's what combustion engineers call an Tim's Chevelle in varying
conditions of part-throttle
use.
excess fuel ratio and is intended to ensure that all the air is used to support the combustion process. This
is because air is the oxidizer in combustion. Too many enthusiasts think that
adding additional fuel beyond the ideal to create a richer mixture will make
more power. This doesn't work because you can only burn the fuel when you
have enough air to support combustion. That's why engines make more power
when you add a supercharger or nitrous--you're shoving more air in the
cylinder so that you can burn more fuel. Regardless of the amount of air in the
cylinder, it still requires a given ratio of fuel to burn. Add too much extra fuel,
and power will decrease. These simple graphs
When it comes to fuel mileage and increased fuel efficiency, this ratio changes illustrate why the narrow-
again. All new cars run at 14.7:1 air-fuel ratio at part throttle because this is the band oxygen sensor (A)
lowest emission point. But depending upon the engine, it's possible to run an is only accurate around
engine at leaner mixtures like 16:1 or more at part throttle to gain mileage. The 14.7:1 air-fuel ratio. Note
difficulty with this is that driveability and throttle response suffers at these its near vertical line at
that air-fuel ratio. Graph
ratios. Engine response is lazy and stumbles are commonplace. Each engine
B illustrates the more
will be different, but there is fuel mileage to be gained by fine-tuning your linear wide-band sensor
carburetor. Don't be intimidated by these lean mixtures at part throttle. You that offers more accuracy
won't burn the engine up since it is making very little horsepower at part across a much wider
throttle cruise--often less than 30 hp. range from around 9:1 to
The Meter roughly 19:1.
Now that we know how this trick little machine works and the air-fuel ratio
that we're shooting for, it's time to start experimenting with the Innovate tool. First of all, you will need a
sensor bung location in the exhaust, preferably in or just downstream of the header collector. This way,
the sensor will read the exhaust content from all four cylinders (assuming a V-8 engine). You could place
a sensor bung in each side of a dual exhaust, but for most street engines, we'll assume that the left and
right banks of your engine will produce similar results. There are some simple guidelines in the
instructions on how the sensor needs to be calibrated for the first time. After that, it can be mounted in
the exhaust system.
Putting the LM-1 to Work
We welded a sensor bung that was included with the LM-1 into the exhaust
system of a carbureted small-block Chevelle equipped with a TH700-R4
automatic overdrive so that we could test both part-throttle and WOT air-fuel
ratio. The Chevelle had previously been tuned for WOT metering, and a quick
blast up a freeway on-ramp produced an output ranging from 12.3:1 to 12.8:1
air-fuel ratio. This appeared to be a bit on the rich side for optimal power, and The LM-1 could be
it might be worthwhile to jet down a size or two on the secondary side to see if especially useful when
tuning your car on a
we could make a little more. We'll save that test for the dragstrip where we can chassis dyno.
evaluate the change based on trap speed.
Even though most car crafters only want to talk about WOT power, we all drive street machines that
operate over 90 percent of the time at part throttle. Given this situation, we used the LM-1 to test the air-
fuel ratio at part throttle. Our test Chevelle was equipped with a Barry Grant 750-cfm Speed Demon
carburetor that Tim Moore had spent a decent amount of time tuning for best idle mixture, but the part
throttle results we saw were a bit of a surprise.
At light throttle opening speeds of 35 to 40 mph up to freeway cruise in
Overdrive, the carburetor delivered consistent air-fuel ratios of between 13.0:1
and 13.5:1 which was close to ideal. The engine runs a GM Performance Parts
hydraulic roller Hot cam (218/228 degrees at 0.050), so even with this mild It's critical to place the
cam, the engine may not like a leaner ratio, but at least this gives us a starting wide-band oxygen sensor
point from which to do some tuning experiments in search of better mileage. in the middle of the
One area that car crafters may not be aware of is that most carburetors at very exhaust pipe where it will
light throttle openings are actually running on the idle circuit rather than the not be affected by
main metering circuit, even if the car is equipped with an Overdrive. In this possible condensation in
case, we tried leaning out the idle mixture screws slightly to see if that would the bottom of the pipe.
When placed near the
improve the part-throttle air-fuel ratio. This leaned out the steady-state air-fuel collector, make sure the
ratio but caused driveability problems, so we will have to try a different collector connection is
technique. tight so leaks do not
The next best thing will be to data-log all this information during a complete affect sensor accuracy.
dragstrip run so you can use a computer to plot the data in a spreadsheet format
to study more closely what the engine is experiencing during a complete run. Then you can make
changes based on the information the LM-1 delivers. What's even better is that you don't have to place
the laptop on board the car during the run. You merely hit the "record" button and the LM-1 will capture
up to 44 minutes of data-logging information with a sample rate of 12 times per second. We've done this
with much more expensive equipment and discovered amazing things about carburetors on the dragstrip.
SOURCES
Innovate Motorsports
27132A Paseo Espada #401
San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675
949/ 388-4442
www.innovatemotorsports.com