Just realized I don't think I've recalibrated the LC1 in... never.
 

Pretty sure it's been never since I've done this. Calibrated it when it went in the car, forgot the rest.

Was just thinking about this today after I did a few street runs to tune the car on the MS3.

:facepalm:

To be fair I only recently started using it with a Megasquirt so before it was just telling me how badly the car was running and I couldn't do much about it.

Will jack it up tomorrow and get this done.

AEM uego user here, what's this calibration you speak of?
/sarcasm

Hopefully its not too far off, but just stay out of boost until you can verify or something.

Yeah, I've heard that the AEM doesn't need calibration. That seems nice. Though it's not that big of an issue since a friend helped me rig up the button and led right next to the hood lever so I can just pop the thing out of the exhaust and hit the button.

How do you know the AEM doesn't ever need a calibration? and how does it know?


When did you install the LC1? Why the desire to free-air calibrate it?

That's just what I heard. Don't know any more than that.

I installed it probably three or more years ago, hell it might be four or five now. Says in the instructions you're supposed to do it every 10k miles or twice a year?

Let us know if AFR's change after the calibration.

Literature from Innovate recommends periodic cal, but I have not run mine enough to know of it really matters.

I mean, despite the time I've probably put less than 10k miles on the car.

Nor do I. But just because something doesn't "need" calibration, doesn't mean something actually doesn't need calibration :P

The benefit of the LC1 was that you can perform a free-air calibration if you so please. It's designed so the calibration takes place in free-air so it has pure atmospheric oxygen as a reference.

The benefit of the AEM was that it doesn't need a calibration--it was calibrated from the factory and apparently at each startup it calibrates against some resistor or something as a reference. The issue I can see with this, is that if the resistor is always supposed to achieve a certain AFR at a certain resistance, what happens when the conditions are skewed in the environment? like what happens if you seal the exhaust and pour raw fuel in the pipe, then power the AEM...will it alter the calibration because the base reference was off? Or it could be something as simple as when you plug the sensor in, and it's powered, it needs to output a certain resistance once it heats up.

I have no clue either. I was just talking smack, but to be perfectly honest I've had an AEM sensor fail on me (way off calibration, autotune started to ruin my map), so it must not do too great of a job :rofl:

yeah see...if the sensor starts to degrade, but it just calibrates it to show you that it's a-okay, then that's not a benefit.

Here's a question, if there is no cat on the car does it count as "free air" if it is still in the exhaust pipe, but it hasn't been running for a day?

:rofl:

Depends how long the exhaust is, i suppose.

Full disclosure: I haven't recalibrated my LC-1 in over 4 years and 40k miles. Haven't noticed any sort of drift. My exhaust also has no cat and is about... 2.5 feet long at best.

For that matter, i don't even have the stupid calibration test circuit push button crap wired in, so i'm not even sure how i'd calibrate it even if i wanted to.

According to LC-2 book, you should pull it out of the exhaust. I would think similar for LC-1. Instructions available at Innovate, if you don't have your hard copy.

On the LC-2, there is a sequence of un-plug, power, de-power, plug in that runs the calibration program. By un-plug / plug I mean the connection between the controller and the sensor... which has to be done anyway in order to remove sensor from exhaust.

I have it all at the car to run before I re-install the sensor.

I assume LC-1 is similar, but I don't think the LC-2 has said push-button (it has a push-button, but for other reasons, and I don't have than in use).

From AEM's UEGO manual:

"Each AEM UEGO sensor is individually calibrated and a resistor integral at the connector body is laser trimmed with this value. This process replaces the traditional “free air” calibration procedure when changing sensors and implements a sensor specific calibration for unparalleled accuracy."

Curly, so AEM is saying that once calibrated, always calibrated, which Concealer is saying is likely the case with his LC-1 as well. I'm hoping that Harv does his re-cal so that we have another data point on if the re-cal is likely needed, or if Innovate is being overly cautious.

As I understand things, some OEMs are now using the same Bosch sensors with no periodic calibrations, which would indicate some lack of need.

Oh, the other thing Innovate says is that running rich requires more frequent re-cal.

Just to be clear... i'm not saying that the Bosch sensor used in the LC-1 setup doesn't NEED periodic calibration, i'm just saying that i'm lazy and really don't know how to calibrate it because i don't have the test circuit thing installed.

On the flip side, maybe someone can explain to me why a Bosch sensor would never go out of calibration, but the same sensor needs to be calibrated in different setups? It makes me feel dumb.

Personally, i view calibration as a feature. One that i clearly don't utilize because again, i'm lazy, but it's still a feature.

The resistor, AFAIK, is in the wiring for the controller, not the sensor, so it works with any bosch sensor, but is specific to the controller. I'm just quoting manuals here, I'm not expert on the matter. Beyond owning one.

FWIW I free air calibrated my LC1 last week before the first drive of the season and the AFRs are definitely different than they were on the last drive before winter storage. Its showing richer readings than before and the re-cal was the only powertrain change that was made.

Anyone know the calibration procedure for the LC-1 if you don't have that stupid test circuit thing hooked up?

that's not exactly what AEM is saying.

they are suggesting that each unit has its own individually tuned resistor to calibrate the GAUGE unit at the factory in perfect test conditions.

This could mean that in a factory, they input a certain voltage into the sender (probably 2.25v) and tune a resistor so that makes the unit display 14.7 AFR.

How does that help you if your sensor is clogged with soot and is not outputting the correct voltages anymore?
How does that help you if you don't live at sea-level?
How does that help you if Bosch suggests their own sensor...

?

With the AEM, you could start out with inaccurate readings from the start that only get worse over time.

With the LC1, you plug in the sensor, you dangle it in free-air, and can accurately calibrate the sensor in your atmospheric conditions whenever you have the 2 minutes to do so.