Installing an EGO meter - photo essay

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Fatty
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Installing an EGO meter - photo essay

Postby Fatty » Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:12 am

i have been offline for a while as i moved house recently and so have been pretty damn busy as you can imagine. i also got the dreaded cold / flu that has been going around, so haven't been very productive. so anyway, finally got my internet connection on again at the new house today and thought i'd post a little about what i have been up to in the last 2 days.

so i have been fiddling with this jaycar digital fuel adjuster (DFA) that i bought a few weeks ago. it's all finished and working perfectly on the test bench. this is a picture of the test / calibration rig. you can see the hand controller there in the picture as well, anyway it's all working as it should be

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so before i install it in the car, i realised that unless i had some way to see what it was doing then it would be a waste of time. so i figured i'd need some way of monitoring the air/fuel mixture, via the O2 sensor, to see what affect any adjustments i make wiith the DFA are having. so of course my first port of call is to jaycar to see what kits they have. it turns out they have about 5 or 6 kits that all seem to do the same thing :roll:
i settled on the \"car fuel mixture display\" kit number KC5195, for $14.95, and here is the end result
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you'll notice that the red leds in the middle are 3mm leds while the yellow and green leds either side are 5mm leds. the kit comes with 5mm leds all round, using green ones in the middle and red ones at the lean end of the scale, and yellow at the rich end. i decided to set it up differently as i found the red leds aren't as bright as the yellow and green ones, so figured these would be best in the \"normal\" range rather than at the extreme of the scale. i aslo chose to use smaller leds in the red range, purely coz i thought it would look better / less instrusive.

ok so now the fun starts, we move on to fitting it in to the car. using the wiring diagram posted by a friendly forum member, we know that the O2 sensor wire is the red / blue wire on the ecu. just to be sure, i thought it was a good idea to double check this by shoving a pin thru the O2 sensor wire in the engine bay, and checking that it shows up at the ecu where it is supposed to

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ok so as you can see the multimeter confirms that we have the correct wire identified at the ecu.

then we need to find the black earth wire and the red / white 12v wire. again, checking with the multimeter to confirm

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next up is to slot the meter into position to see how it looks. i chose to mount it in the little space between the steering column and the instrument cluster. i thought this was a nice inconspicuous spot, as well as being right in the line of sight. as you can see, i have packed the board with some foam and wrapped it in black tape so it will blend in to it's surroundings.
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i fastenned it in place using some adhesive velcro strips, so i can remove it again if i choose to with minimum fuss. here's some shots from a few different angles
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getting the wires from the drivers side thru to the passenger side (where the ecu is) proved to be difficult as it's a really tight fit under the dash. not much room at all. so i solderred all the wires on to a stiff, solid peice of wire and shoved it thru, then pulled it out the other side.

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then you just splice the wires in at the right spot, and voila, all done.
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so here it is , you can't tell from this shot but this is the meter indicating that we're in closed loop mode. the meter is oscillating up and down, \"knight rider\" style :lol:
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and then you plant the throttle and things get rich
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so there ya go. just thought i'd share this with you guys as i'm on broadband now so figured i'd take advantage of it and post lots of photos :mrgreen:

i'm looking forward to driving the car wiith this meter in it just to get an understanding of what is going on with the air/fuel mixtures at different loads. it should help me down the track when i install the DFA etc.

Fatty
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Postby Fatty » Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:20 am

getting the wires from the drivers side thru to the passenger side (where the ecu is) proved to be difficult as it's a really tight fit under the dash. not much room at all. so i solderred all the wires on to a stiff, solid peice of wire and shoved it thru, then pulled it out the other side.

Image

then you just splice the wires in at the right spot, and voila, all done.
Image

so here it is , you can't tell from this shot but this is the meter indicating that we're in closed loop mode. the meter is oscillating up and down, \"knight rider\" style :lol:
Image

and then you plant the throttle and things get rich
Image

so there ya go. just thought i'd share this with you guys as i'm on broadband now so figured i'd take advantage of it and post lots of photos :mrgreen:

i'm looking forward to driving the car wiith this meter in it just to get an understanding of what is going on with the air/fuel mixtures at different loads. it should help me down the track when i install the DFA etc.

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STV
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Postby STV » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:59 am

Are you intenting to do a before and after dyno run or proper tuning of the DFA on a dyno?

wondering what sort of improvement (real world) it would make by using this set up.

Looking good though mate. glad to see you trying something new, and shaing your experiences.

All the best

STV
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Matty
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Postby Matty » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:00 pm

Go back to Jaycar and buy one of the 10-LED bargraphs. they make a much neater display. (see my cardomain page)

You do lose the yellow rich end, but the reds are still at the lean end which is what's important.

Fatty
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Postby Fatty » Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:04 pm

hi steve, no i wasn't planning on putting the car on a dyno. mainly due to the cost as i understand that can be rather expensive. but it would be good to do though wouldn't it. how much does a run on a dyno usually cost ? ?

hey matty i had a look at your cardomain page but i can't see any pictures other than the ones on the 1st page. none of the other pages have any pics on them ? ? ? ? i would really like to see how you've mounted yr meter.

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STV
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Postby STV » Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:32 pm

no idea how much time on a dyno costs..

i just thought so that you can properly quantify the net gains, rather than a seat on the pants guess..

cos i know that washing my car makes it go faster... gives better fuel economy too!

Cheers Mate

STV
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Matty
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Postby Matty » Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:32 pm

they changed the coding syntax, had to tweak it, but look now at the middle of page 5.

basically I mounted the kit in exactly the same way and location as you, but with the bargraph instead of the separate LEDs. The bargraph lines up exactly with all the PCB holes.

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Okibi
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Postby Okibi » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:20 pm

Matty, that http://miata.cardomain.com/id/Username doesn't seem to work anymore, you'll need to update your WWW link.

http://www.cardomain.com/id/username worked for me.
If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away? Neither would I.

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Okibi
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Postby Okibi » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:22 pm

Here's Matty's pics.

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If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away? Neither would I.

Fatty
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Postby Fatty » Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:01 am

haha matty that's hilarious. here i was thinking i'd done somethiing original when you had already bought the same kit, modified the led display (well not exactly like i did but anyway) , and fitted it in the same spot!

oh well, great minds think alike i guess :lol:

i really like the look of that brake cylinder brace. i was thinking of getting the braided lines from mania but i'll keep your brace idea in mind, it looks great.


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