Let me start by saying I AM NOT A TUNER! I am just a rider that wants to be able to add/change parts on my bike without having to get the bike dyno tuned every time I mod something. I would much rather spend my time in the saddle than tinkering (sort of). There is not a tuner within four hours of me that I trust and has experience with the Woolich system. I just found a recent thread about one of our members running a full exhaust without a tune and catastrophic failure occurred at around 17k miles. I cannot afford that either monetarily or emotionally.
I am not looking to eek every available pony out of my Busa as required by you guys running down the 1/4. I do however want the bike to run close to its potential with the peace of mind that I am not leaning out and risking catastrophic failure.
I am going to put some general information in this post for future reference for myself and anyone else that my want to go this route in the future. Some of you already know a lot of this information and some don't so please just skip through the fundamentals if you already know the deal. I still haven't found a good single source thread for this setup/configuration. I am not saying it isn't out there, just that I haven't found it. If anyone is aware of such a thread, I welcome you to add it to this posting. I will attempt to post accurate information but if you see something that is wrong, do not hesitate to call me on it.
I am currently running the Woolich Racing Logbox which has the ability to read and flash the bikes ECU. This is not a piggyback system, rather an interface to alter/modify the factory settings with complete control. There is also a built in "factory" program so that you can start from scratch if you feel you have screwed something up. When hooked to the bike, you can also log data from the ECU and "Autotune" based on the data you log. I am currently running the stock narrow band O2 sensor which is less than ideal for logging data to autotune with. Below you will find information regarding the difference between narrow an wide band sensors and how they send data to the ECU, gauge, and/or real-time tuning system. As stated above, I am preparing to install the LC-1 to send accurate A/F data to my logbox so that I can accurately autotune my bike for my mods.
That is enough for today and I will post some more links and pics as I move forward. BTW, I bought the LC-1 kit pictured above factory sealed for $157.60 shipped from a reputable distributor off of eBay.
From here:
Auto Meter
Wideband Air/Fuel Ratio Gauge vs. Narrowband Air/Fuel Ratio Gauge
To fully understand why a high performance vehicle tuner would be better off using a wide-band O2 sensor/gauge versus a narrow band setup, we must first understand what each sensor was originally developed to do.
Narrow Band O2 Sensors began to appear on vehicles with the advent of fuel injection in the 1980's. Their purpose was to monitor component degradation (i.e. fuel injectors, vacuum leaks) of vehicles as they accumulated miles. Their basic job was to let the computer know whether the vehicle was running at an air/fuel ratio of 14.7:1 under idle (ideal ratio for gasoline engines), moderate acceleration, and cruise conditions, and if it wasn't, to "trim" the injector pulse-width to either slightly lean or richen the engine. When the computer is paying attention to the input from the O2 sensor, the engine is operating in a "closed-loop" capacity. Under heavier acceleration or wide-open throttle the computer ignores the O2 sensor because it requires an air/fuel ratio other than 14.7:1, which is outside the design parameters of the sensor. This is known as "open-loop" operation. The sensor lets the computer know if the engine is running above or below 14.7:1 by sending voltage to the computer in a range between 0 and 1 volt, usually sweeping between the two extremes of this scale. Auto Meter's traditional narrow-band air/fuel ratio gauges are simply a voltmeter for this signal. This can be seen by the repeated sweeping back and forth of the gauge in most idle, light throttle, and cruise conditions. To summarize, a narrow band O2 sensor is only able to tell a computer (or gauge, for that matter) whether an engine is operating above or below a 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio.
Wide Band O2 Sensors where developed in the early '90s as vehicle manufacturers began looking to obtain air/fuel ratio information under all circumstances. This ranged from WOT to varying ratios, for example running air/fuel ratios leaner than 14.7:1 under cruise conditions. Volkswagen and Honda pioneered the development of the wide-band O2 sensors to provide accurate air-fuel ratios under these varying circumstances. They did this by broadening the voltage range in which feedback from the sensor was provided and making a linear scale that provided a fixed voltage that correlated to a specific air/fuel ratio.
Hope you enjoyed today's installment. Tune in next time for my post on tuning software options.