Innovate Motorsports Wideband Controller

For any natural aspiration to turbo conversion project, a wideband controller is almost a must have item for the absolute serious tuners and enthusiasts.

Most natural aspirated cars comes factory fitted with a narrow band sensor where it could only read air fuel ratios between 14.5 and 15.1, which is pretty much useless for turbo cars whereby the air fuel ratio ranges are much more wider.

Toyota Vios turbo has been using the LC-1 wideband controller from Innovate Motorsports since the very first day it left GT Auto's garage, and the reason why we chose Innovate over other brands like AEM, DynoJet and Zeitronix is pretty much self explanatory here.

The test conducted by Ford Muscle clearly shows that the Innovate LC-1 wins hands down in terms of accuracy and response time over others, put aside the other features such as the logging capabilities of the software.

Besides that, the thing we like about the LC-1 is that it has 2 programmable analog outputs, a feature very useful for tuners to tune OBD-II compliant cars where the ECU relies on 2 narrowband sensors to adjust the air fuel ratio during closed loop operation.

OBD-II car owners should take notice what I am about to post next.

With the analog output feature, we're able to fool the stock ECU to keep the fuel trims in check by wiring an analog output to simulate narrow band reading to the ECU so that it does not correct any adjustments made by the E-Manage piggyback unit during closed loop.

Think of it as an O2 remapping device if you will, and the only other devices that we have seen in the market which has similar capabilities is the AEM F/IC piggyback, HKS F-Con iS and the F-Manage from Trust Japan, whereby even the mighty R35 GTR's ecu was also defeated by it.

As far we know, Innovate is the only producer of digital wideband controller in the market which is capable of auto self calibration, whereby the rest are all analog based and had to rely on the factory sensor calibration. This is a major factor to consider when deciding on your purchase of a wideband controller because when the sensor ages, so will the accuracy of the reading.

So if you were somehow unlucky and purchased a unit which is not capable of calibration, you wouldn't have any idea when the sensor is going bad. There won't be any compensations for changes in temperature, altitude and sensor condition.

In simple terms, your engine is basically blinded but with its eyes wide open. In this case, you might as well just throw it away and run your car fully map based, lose your fuel economy rather than risking an engine blow.

LC-1/XD-16 kit package

XD-16 gauge showing stoich during idling