Lc-2 vs AEM X series
 

Any preference between the two? Or is there something better in the same price range? Only reviews I can find claim the x series is slightly faster. Will use it on my m45 to determine how much ignition retard I need until I order my MS and then run it with MS of course.

LC2 is junk, eats sensors like they don't cost ~$100 plus the pain of replacing them. Never will I ever buy an innovate product again.

Just my opinion though, never had anything AEM.

I like my AEM X Series a lot, have installed two on two miatas and both work great. I do abuse the sensor pretty frequently (turn the key to on to prematurely turn on the heater circuit) which isn't very good for the sensor and it still works great. You can also wire it via CANbus for faster response when you get a megasquirt.

I've had my lc2 for a few years now and I have had 0 problems with it.

I've got no experience with the LC-2, but have an X series in my car running CAN. No issues to report and I would recommend it :2cents:

I have an AEM unit that is 12 years old that is still running just fine in my turbo race car. And I have a new AEM I got 7 months ago to put in a stock 2001 Miata. It worked for a few days, then started giving super lean readings, and then stopped reading at all. I called up the AEM service line and they said it was the senor, then replaced it free of charge. The new sensor has worked for 6 months now.

Before buying the AEM I read reviews about Innovate and AEM on sales websites like Amazon, and on forums like this. A lot of people mentioned Innovate sensor failures. Both systems use the same Bosch sensor. It is hard for me to picture that Innovate-Bosch would fail more than AEM-Bosch, but I opted for the AEM given my past experience. Maybe the controller could play a role, but I don't know.

I do know that a lot of people on forums and Amazon reviews complained that Innovate told them "too bad, so sad" in relation to the sensor failure. AEM simply shipped me a new one, with no issues.

The current MS systems are pre-calibrated for the Innovate, and you have to dig into this website or the AEM site for info on the scale to use to calibrate for the AEM, but it is not that big a deal to do.

I have seen the claims that the sensor now responds faster to AFR changes. I am not sure how much that matters, in that I see it vary quickly enough on the gauge, with a lot more noise than one hopes the injectors and the car would respond to anyhow. The speed to warm up, or the lag time for signal vs actual AFR will be important. But the ability to respond super fast to rapid oscillations in AFR signal seems like more of a negative than a positive, given it looks more like noise than real changes.

Thanks for the replies, just ordered the x-series. As you guys said most of the bad reviews I found were for the lc-2. Luckily neither option is expensive but if I get more longevity out of sensors with the AEM I'll call that a win.

innovate sucks. aem all day

The controller is the key part of sensor longevity. OEMs do use the same sensors, and they tend to live long happy lives. What surprises me is that even AEM (which has done a good job otherwise) does not offer the option to command warmup start over CANbus. I would love to be able to do so based on certain engine conditions (CLT and time spent over say 500RPM) to avoid condensation droplets hitting a hot sensor.

That is very interesting. By warm up start, do you mean pre-heating the sensor before starting the engine? If so, for how long? Could you accomplish the same thing by leaving it in run for a brief period before going to start the engine?
Or do you mean something quite different, Harry? Like, the sensor not warming up at all when the hot engine is first turned on, to give a bit of time for the exhaust gas to get hot enough to not condense, so droplets hit a cold sensor, and cause less stress on it?

The latter; prevent the sensor to warm up without a running warm engine.

So one could simply add a switch to the power leads on the controller, and flip it after the car is warm? Will that mess up the MS3 during warmup, since it will get no AFR reading? Or is that already locked out and in open loop at start up?

If you use AFR CEL it will possibly blink for a while after startup. I run CAN wideband, it doesn't broadcast if it's not on. So my AFR is 0.0 until it starts, then it's 14.7 while warming up. That makes my CEL blink since 0.0 is less than the minimum it will ever output. MS3 AFR CEL sucks anyway, it has no adjustable timeout so you can't check it against flat line because of overrun actually flat lining...

Otherwise, not really. Change the EGO afterstart delay to compensate or make sure that it's range of adjustment is locked out while the wideband is outputting full rich if you are using analog. Probably both.

I didn't either, until I did.

My issue was random flat-lining the Analog AFR signal. No Error codes and same sensor for 5+ years.

I have an AEM coming.

EDIT: And I routinely have reasons (like downloading (uploading) SD files) where I leave Key On Not Running, and have never had a sensor even show need for free air calibration, much less become non-operative.

I just a couple weeks ago had an issue with an LC2 that was working 100%, and reading 100% wrong.
It was reading normal at idle, but in boost it would never go richer than 12afr. We kept adding fuel to the point that the car couldn't even go into boost cause it was so rich, and it would still read 12afr.

And that's just a recent example. Screw innovate. They suck.

I recently rewired my x series gauge so that I'm using the CAN high low inputs on my ms3. I'm impressed with the increase in reaction time the ms3 has now compared to the gauge. I ended up doing some auto tuning this weekend and the car is running better than it ever did. Try to wire it up with CAN if possible!

I've used both the innovate LC-2 and the x-series. LC2 analog out seemed to be extremely sensitive to ground fluctuations, to the point that I actually developed a small microcontroller to transcode the Innovate serial output to CAN for the megasquirt to read. Then it crapped out entirely. The X-series (wired via CAN) absolutely blows the janky LC-2 setup out of the water and I've been running it with no problems for the last 3 years. No more free air calibration, no more sensor failures, no DIY serial/CAN dongle. Hooray.

I second this opinion. Back in 2012 I bought an Innovate LC-1 and wired it in perfectly. My engineer brother that builds wire harnesses and previously designed fuse boxes for GM confirmed my wiring. It was properly grounded but would randomly get stuck reading fully lean. The MS2 I was trying to tune didn't like that at all. I followed the reset instructions over and over again but it wasn't easy to get it to reset and recalibrate. I finally got Innovate to agree to check it out under warranty. I shipped it back and surprise, it worked perfectly, they couldn't replicate. I reinstalled it and it worked fine for a day or two before getting stuck again. After wasting shipping both ways I didn't want to try another WBO2 brand so I threw in the towel and sold the MS2 and LC-1 in frustration. "Never will I ever buy an Innovate product again". :bigtu: