UHHH, what do you think we used to have to do before the widespread availability of wide band o2 sensors. Believe it or not, people used to tune cars before there was a dyno in every town, or piggyback fuel controlers.

 

taking the manifold/turbo assembly off is really quite simple. you need 2 people though, at least I would prefer a helper for this matter myself.

 

You're an idiot... lol.. ok. egt. Exhaust gas temperature. When you run lean.. what happens.. temp goes up. So you would think if it goes up, add more fuel and you should be fine. Well.. think a little bit harder (don't hurt yourself now). What happens when you run too rich? OMG... your egts go up, too! So watching the egt is a crapass way to tune a car. You are better off watching knock count and even that sucks compared to the ****tiest wideband on the market. You are right.. lots of dsms have tuned by egt in the past... perhaps thats one of the reasons they have such a bad reputation for breaking all the time?

 

I'm an idiot? A car running rich enought to raise the EGT is about as obvious as a prostitute in church. If you can not tell if you car is running way too rich or way too lean without having a computer tell you, then you might not want to be tuning cars. Do you want to tune with a wideband? Hell yes. Do I have one? No.

How about this.... I figured out my car is running pig rich on the top end from observatios of the car. I have a good basline of EGTs from running my car in various situations. I know what's normal on MY EGT on MY car. Readings from car to car are going to vary due to probe location, design of the sensor etc. etc...

I add a cheap fuel controler. I make very small changes. I Use the EGT as one clue among many that I am going in the right direction. The car runs better and makes more power. I would certainly like to tune the car on a dyno with a wideband. I just dont happen to have an AWD dyno within 400 miles.

You can spend a lot of time and money getting the tune perfect on the dyno. You can and should buy a wideband if you are going to be doing serious mods. BUT by using simple methods you can make the car a LOT better without spending a pile of money. Just dont be an idiot with how much you push.

 

Well the only problem with this little theory is, that not all cars make the best power at the best a/f ratios. Many times you will lose power when you go lean and lose power when you go rich. How can you tell why you are losing power when? You can't. The egt is not a tuning instrument. End of story. For close to the same price as a nice egt you can pick up a plx wideband.

 

must say that the PLX stuff looks pretty nice.