qbmurderer13

well its down to 14.76 now, is there any other way for me to find out besides installing a wideband O2?

s2000Junky

Anything over 14 is lean enough to cause damage. 13.3-13.5 is considered High maximum safe for N/A engines. Installing another bung for sensing your actual AFR is the only sure way to get the accurate reading. $50 for this. Call around to shops and see if you can get your car checked via this method rather then a tail pipe sniffer, any shop that does emissions tuning should be able to check this at hopefully less then $150 which is the typical dyno charge. If they determine your car to actually be running at 14.75, then they should be able to help you figure out why too, Dyno guy won't.

CrankDatVtec

BTW I got a VAFCII, If you need one.

qbmurderer13

i know the test pipe has a distinctive smell to it but to me it almost smells like fuel, smells like a very rich car. am i just smelling the test pipe or what?

s2000Junky

No your smelling the fuel and sometimes the nice aroma of burnt oil too. One of the benifits of running a test pipe. With a proper leaner tune about half of this goes away, allot of times I woun't notice it anymore, the guys behind me may feel differently however.

qbmurderer13

if i really was running lean then wouldnt i not be smelling this fuel?

and also is this something i can just tune with the vafc or is it something much more serious?

s2000Junky

If your running lean you won't be smelling it as much as if you are running rich, but your still going to smell it more then stock becuase there is no cat. Now it is possible that if your running too lean your engine oil temp is over heated which is likley at 14.76 and will cause more oil burning, this you will smell too and maybe more of the aroma that you are getting, oil and fuel smells are distiguishable at times but not always, they mix too.

Yes, you can adjust your fuel with the VAFC but if you have a problem with fuel starvation, the Vafc will prove to be a poor band aid. You need to get the problem figured out first. Vafc is a performance inhancer, not a band aid. If you know you want to get one anyway then get it, but don't neglect the fact that you may have a reall problem that needs to be addressed or risk damaging your expesive car.

FF2Skip

If your car smells rich enough for you to think it's running rich, you are definitely not running close to 15:1 A/F. As others have said, using a sniffer to determine A/F is inaccurate, but does allow for tuners to tune on the safe side. Measuring said ratio at the header or testpipe will be more accurate.

Perhaps I missed it, but checking compression is simple enough. If you're unable to perform the task, it would not cost you much to have it done. If the results from the compression test find inconsistency from cylinder-to-cylinder, then a leakdown test would be in order. Low power(realized... not on the dyno), oil consumption, and poor gas mileage would be possible indicators of internal problems.

Considering the use of the oem ecu, I honestly doubt your car is running 14.75 A/F. I'm betting the car would throw an CEL at that point and go into "limp" mode.