AIM Lambda Install

[joseph hollinger]

Those of you who are interested in AIM's Lambda for two strokes may appreciate the following pictures of the system installed on my Gp8 Leopard. In no particular order:

The host:




The Bosch sensor mounted on the Leopard exhaust:



From another angle:



The AIM articles (at least one of them) show the sensor mounted on the flex. I didn't go that route because we're not allowed to run solid flex and I didn't think flexible flex would be suitable for welding.

The LCU-One controller mounted on the left side of the seat:


I think the controller generally gets mounted under the nose fairing.

Terminal block power connection for the LCU One:



For this application, this is probably serious overkill. But, I moved the battery and starter box (because I wanted to and for no other reason) and this was an easy way to connect all the wires:

Relocated battery box (obvious thanks to Dr. Frankenstein):



And starter box:



Anyway, this was pretty easy to do and the new AIM stuff (Mychon Four) is just super. I'll submit something after I've done some testing.

[Howie Idelson]

Isn't it supposed to mount at the other end of the pipe - far away from the egt?
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[joseph hollinger]

[Chris Livengood]

I have run a Lambda sensor on several of my karts on and off for about 5 years. It is ideal to mount it in the header. Any air leak will completely disrupt your results. After the header and flex, even with the rubber sleeve is asking for trouble. GM for example scrutinizes the exhaust ahead of the lambda sensor before calibration otherwise they are worthless.

Otherwise is looks like an extremely nice installation and I look forward to hearing your results.
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[joseph hollinger]

[matt weeks]

Hi Joseph, about installing your probe in the exhaust. I'm not saying its a bad idea, It will work fine, but just make sure your flex is well sealed as air can be sucked in when off throttle. It may give you oddball readings. NB if you use silicone some brands buggers up sensors.

I run mine in the headder for this very reason. A small tip: if you do mount it in the headder sit the probe up high so the nose only just protrudes into the jet stream. If the probe is all the way in kills HP.

Its good to see you still running your EGT. These two guages together complement each other well. Mychron has some info about it on their site.

Happy Karting

[joseph hollinger]

[Chris Livengood]

I never noticed any performance decrease by having it directly in the exhaust. Certainly it is a big piece of material in the most narrow part of the exhaust so maybe there is a decrease in HP, but I never really noticed it. I was however only running the sensor in practice and testing. I just didn't find it that valuable after I had accumulated a certain amount of data. I did get a third at a Man Cup one year with it in though. That race was in the rain, so who knows.
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[Jordon Musser]

Anybody care to post what they think of the wideband o2 sensor in realworld use?

[joseph hollinger]

Well, I'm certainly not qualified to talk about wideband sensors in general and perhaps only slightly more so with regard to the LCU-1. That said, here are my thoughts (in no particular order).

1) The AIM hardware is first rate. The system seemlessly integrates with the mychron-4 and never skipped a beat. It requires an external power supply to heat the probe before operation which is easily accomplished for TAG and other karts that already have batteries. Obviously, that would be an issue for karts that don't have batteries on board. I connected my system using a simple toggle switch so that it wouldn't drain the battery when the kart was not running. Remembering to turn the switch on and off at the appropriate times was sometimes an issue.

2) Oil fouling the sensor was never an issue (I know that some people expect that would not be the case). Running the sensor at one SKUSA event (where leaded fuel is, unfortunately still required) killed it.

3) The sensor provides accurate information when the motor is under load. When you are off the gas, the exhaust stream becomes contaminated by air and the readings are all wrong. As a result, it's not like EGT where you can look at the max and min values and learn something. In fact, the max and min lambda values tell you absolutely nothing. Instead, you have to carefully analyze the lambda trace and the RPM trace. You ignore all data where RPM's are falling and look for the laps where RPM's are increasing the most. If you can find that lap, then that lambda value is your target.

4) Now, before anyone thinks I'm being critical, I want to state for the record that I'm a huge AIM fan. That wasn't always the case, but I'm a solid fan these days. There stuff works and they provide the best service and support in the business. That said, I think that race studio is really the weak link in the LCU-1 setup. It's a computer program and it should be able to tell me (with no analysis on my part) which lap yielded the best acceleration and its corresponding lambda value. Race studio should be rejecting the spurious Lambda values that correspond to throttle off conditions. In short, race studio should be doing the work here, not me scratching my head. That's what computers are good for.

In my opinion, AIM could do itself a huge favor by publishing the format of .drk files and let the rest of us to the heavy lifting to make things happen on the analysis side. I realize that not everyone is interested in these things, but I'd certainly chip in and I doubt I'm the only one. The first vendor that adopts an open source model for its analysis software is going to crush its competition.

Anyway, that's a lot of me talking about a pretty limited number of races in 08 with the LCU-1. For '09 I'm moving from TAG to Stock Moto and I'm ordering a new bung so that I can mount the wide band sensor on the moto pipe. So yes, I think it's worth it.

[Jordon Musser]

Yea, ive exported in spreadsheet format and done some pretty serious data crunching.

Thanks for the info. I might look into getting one this season to play with.

[Ken Schilling]

Joseph,

Your kart is absolutely beautiful!!! And I though I was picky about having a clean kart... (see my signature).

I'm curious though about the starting box. Can you still reach it even though it's between your feet?
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SKUSA Data Administrator

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[Chris Parks]

We have just run one for the first time last weekend and instantly found an answer to a problem that has puzzled me for some time. The pipe and piston looks a good colour but when it is leaned one jet size the motor starts missing, also the EGT looks good for all intents and purposes. The lambda says otherwise though and reckons we need to richen it a fair bit so that will happen next time. Make sure you have some way of charging the battery if you are running the motor off it as these things chew through the amps.
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Chris

[joseph hollinger]