That sucks. I have 3 of them and have had quite a few people buy them and haven't heard of any defective ones. I haven't seen a single failure. There was a firmware issue on some of the very first ones but that's all I've heard of.

Good to know though.. probably should do research on that before buying.

 

Any reason on why I shouldn't buy one?

 

Other than what was mentioned earlier by MickVette.. no. IMO anyways. Probably worth looking around just to be sure I haven't just gotten lucky with no issues?

And buy from somewhere with a decent return policy just in case

 

Well I was gonna get mine through Summit which does offer that.

 

I researched this product and read tons of good things about it. I have an AEM stand alone on my turbo Mustang and love it so I was expecting another great product. I later buought an AEM EUGO wide band sensor for that car but it didn't work. I guess I just get unlucky with AEM and wide bands. I don't feel like playing the send it back and fourth game. After mine wouldn't read any AFR except 20:1 or full rich I researched issues with the 30-0333 and found lots of problems. It appears sometimes the firmware updates and recalibration from AEM can get it right but I read were several never did end up reading correctly.

I bought mine from Summit Racing. I'm not sure how old this one is or how long it sat on the shelf, but it is going back. Luckily, they have a great return policy.

 

Geez. What would you recommend I get?

 

I don't know. That is why I clicked on this thread. I was looking for a good wide band to use with the methanol injection I just installed. The FJO I have isn't made anymore. The one I borrow from the local tuner isn't made anymore. The last three I purchased flat out didn't work.

 

Well shoot....

 

Update, I ended up buying from Ballinger Motorsports. http://www.bmotorsports.com/shop/pro...oducts_id/2337
AFR500v2 - Air Fuel Ratio Monitor Kit - Wideband O2 System And got the optional NTK Calibration grade sensor.

It looks identical to the AFX I had been borrowing and works great. I used the heck out of it dial in the water/methanol mixture the car liked the best. Pretty much have to dial in each ratio separately.

The only thing is there is a calibration **** on the back of the display that can get easily bumped. I put a piece of tape over that after I bumped it a couple times which require removing the sensor from the exhaust and doing another free air calibration.

Of course after ripping apart the two 10x30 storage units I am renting several times hunting for the old FJO wide band over the past three months, I found it the night before the 1/2 mile race in a box in another box full of car cleaning supplies.

 

I ended up with the Innovate ECB-1 and I love it! Reads AFR/Boost/Fuel Temp and Ethanol content and also has datalogging capabilities.

 

Those are good options because I had to hand calculate my target AFR with the amount of methanol and ethanol with the gasoline I was using. The coolest part was when I finish tuning during the half mile event my target AFR that I had calculated was very close to spot-on accurate with what AFR made the most power and highest top speed.

 

Or you could just use lambda and then it doesn't matter.

 

The Lambda always being a target of 1 is confusing. How does it know what is in the tank?

Don't you still need to know the percentages of each fuel present in the mix for Lambda?

For example I have:
10% ethanol in the 93 octane gasoline (supposedly)
adding Water/Methanol into the mix I need to know the GPH nozzle (10gph), and water/methanol percentage (55/45%) so I can get an accurate stoichiometric target using AFR. With that mixture of fuels my car did the fastest times in the 1/2 mile at just under 11.1 AFR or about .8 Lambda after calculating all the mess the engine was ingesting. I started at a very rich 9.75:1'ish AFR and leaned out from there and watched the car get faster and faster with each pass until it started picking up KR:

How does Lambda just know it needs to be 1 without knowing the fuels mixed together and their percentages?

Even after reading this article it still didn't clear things up for me:
http://www.ultra-gauge.com/customer_...php?article=29

 

No. None of that matters and it is mostly wrong.

O2 sensors just read how much oxygen there is. 0.8 lambda means it's 20% richer than whatever stoich is for that fuel. Doesn't matter if it's E85, E100, methanol, gasoline, doesn't matter. If it's 0.85 lambda then it's 15% richer than stoich. Doesn't matter if it's a mix of fuels, E50, blah blah blah, doesn't matter.

Widebands don't know or care what stoich for a particular fuel is; they just pick up how much oxygen there is and can figure out a lambda reading from there. They all read lambda and the vast majority just multiply that lambda value by 14.68 and spit out the number. The exception might be setups like the Innovate one with the E85 sensor where it has a better idea what the "actual" stoich value is. I've never used one of those so I can't comment on those.

Example: If you take a regular wideband and put it on a car running E85, in closed loop, lambda=1, it will show 14.68. Reality it's more like 9.8:1, but there's no way for the sensor to know it's E85. It just knows based on the amount of oxygen in the exhaust that it's running at stoich. And stoich x 14.68 = 14.68. Put the same sensor on a car running gasoline that's in closed loop, lambda=1 and it will still show 14.68. Even that is probably technically wrong as most gas has some amount of ethanol in it, so it's probably running more like 14.1:1. That's why it gets so confusing and why lambda is so much easier. It doesn't matter what fuel you're running or what the stoich value is, your lambda target is the same

There's a lot of bad information on this on the internet. There are a lot of posts saying you have to factor in the stoich values for meth and E85 if you're running both, etc. These posts are wrong.

 

Thank you. That does make sense. The engineer in me wants to see math.

 

I can add more math, too much and it just gets confusing when I'm trying to boil it down to "use lambda instead"

 

Understand. K.I.S.S rule and that works with nearly 100% of the people out there.

Then there is always that one xsshole that the math answers the "why" part and lets my brain move on to the "use Lambda part". hahaha! I'll research that part when things slow down and get back into car mode. (Just bought a garage with a house on the property, setting up the shop, moving two 10x30 storage units, and that pesky time consuming thing called work keeping me busy)