No "check engine light" with headers!!!

I found the fix for running the aftermarket ebay headers! And keeping you CEL light out, hell the monitors even pass! Now this is on a '02 330Ci with MS43, I am not sure if this will work on '03 and later as they run MS45, but if your brave and want to try I'll help you out.

Now not that I am all for taking catalytic converters off your car, it's very horrible and you should all feel bad and put them back on.

But with that being said, the Innovate LC-1 is a very cool tool that I honestly must give credit to that pie330 guy for telling me about. It is a wideband O2 sensor with a little control unit that gives you 2 programmable outputs and a serial cable hookup for laptop hookup and tuning.

Now this may sound complicated but it really wasn't that hard to hookup, but I would recommend some automotive and electrical experience and a good soldering iron.

So with the headers installed hook up your 2 pre-cat sensors, this should leave you with 2 bungs left, well plug one and install the Bosch wideband O2 sensor in the other. Now I know your only reading one bank but this is the best I can do for now.

The Innovate controller fits under the engine cover nicely. ( I'll get some pics here in a day or two) I used my old connectors from the old post-cat O2 sensors, installed a 50ohm 10watt resistor in each of two sets of white wires, these are the O2 heater ciruit wires.

For the signal and ground wires it gets tricky. So we should have two wires left over at each of your O2 sensor connections, now sensor side wiring changes so reference the engine harness side for this. Bring the two wires together that connect to the yellow wire, and wire in about 3' of small yellow wire this is the Analog1 output from the controller. Next bring together the two wires that connect to the black wire, again 3' of small black wire, this is the signal ground. Bring this signal ground the yellow wire and all the associated LC-1 wires in a nice loom into the e-box, you'll even find a grommet you can use.

Once in the e-box lift the DME and the bracket that it's held into up and expose the chunk of red-white and brown wires underneath. Connect the sensor ground wire and the white and blue LC-1 ground wires to the splice of brown grounds under the DME, next connect the LC-1's red wire into the splice of red-white yellow dotted wires. Connect the yellow wires together.

Well if your still with me the hard part is done, fire up the laptop and load the software. While your doing this there is a bit of a calibration hoop you need to jump through, the directions are in the box with the LC-1.

Once you load the software go to Analog1, select "use air-to-fuel ratio" and program in .650volts at 18:1 and .100volts at 22:1, then go to advanced and select 1/3 second delay. Program all this in and clear you old catalytic converter efficiency faults and then go out and enjoy.

I have played around with this voltage curve a little and this curve finally got the monitor to pass, as I datalog more cars I'll update any changes I find. Hope this helps, I have found many cool ideas on this forum and wanted to give something back.

thats a very expensive o2 simulator, if you are not doing any tuning

$40 at o2simulator.com works just fine, too

Originally Posted by aggieE46

$40 at o2simulator.com works just fine, too

Have you had these actuakky work for you? Because they didn't work for me, eventually my car set a light.
You see the O2 sensor foolers don't work, you get " catalytic efficiency faults".
The O2 sensor simulators don't produce the low voltage "lean" signal when you decelerate, so you will get " oxygen sensor low voltage not detected" fault.

I have tried it all, the LC-1 allows for the good .650 voltage of a good cat at cruising speeds and gives the low voltage on decel, with the addiction of the 1/3 second delay that is what the DME uses to measure the oxygen saturation of the catalytic converter. I am not sure if this is what they designed this little gem for, but it works damn good.

Glad to hear it worked out for you, and thank you for posting the details for others to learn from.

Working for several thousand miles, now.

Originally Posted by F1004fun

Have you had these actuakky work for you? Because they didn't work for me, eventually my car set a light.
You see the O2 sensor foolers don't work, you get " catalytic efficiency faults".
The O2 sensor simulators don't produce the low voltage "lean" signal when you decelerate, so you will get " oxygen sensor low voltage not detected" fault.

I have tried it all, the LC-1 allows for the good .650 voltage of a good cat at cruising speeds and gives the low voltage on decel, with the addiction of the 1/3 second delay that is what the DME uses to measure the oxygen saturation of the catalytic converter. I am not sure if this is what they designed this little gem for, but it works damn good.

Originally Posted by aggieE46

Working for several thousand miles, now.

I am interested to know if your OBD2 monitors have passed for the cats.

There was a while that I didn't get faults, like about 2 months but the monitors would still not pass.

Nice...

Now if there was a way to get the EGT sensor to stop throwing a code from installing headers without actually disabling the monitors...

I'll hook up AutoEnginuity later and see what's up.

Other than that, I guess I'll find out next year when I go in for inspection.

Originally Posted by F1004fun

I am interested to know if your OBD2 monitors have passed for the cats.

There was a while that I didn't get faults, like about 2 months but the monitors would still not pass.

Originally Posted by aggieE46

$40 at o2simulator.com works just fine, too

I apologize in advance for the noobish question, but i'm considering headers. If i purchase an o2 sim, will my car pass emission tests? My residence is in the "city". Any insight would be much appreciated.

Interesting...

AA Tuning worked for me and it can work for you too

Originally Posted by SpeedDemon

AA Tuning worked for me and it can work for you too

how much does AA charge for a remap? and how long does it take?

Originally Posted by SL Blak Soldier

how much does AA charge for a remap? and how long does it take?

$200 and I paid for overnight shipping both ways. I also actually had them put their throttle remap thing on their and raise the rev limit from 6800RPM to 7000RPM; they call it a custom tune and it was $400 in total for everything). My car had to be parked for 3 days and that was counting shipping between Seattle and Florida... not too bad.

I tried the o2sim, but i'm still getting a SES. More specifically I'm getting BMW codes 215 and 216, aka P2270, P2271, P2272, P2273. And I get "lean voltage not reached." This sounds an awful lot like the deceleration issue mentioned in the first post. Anyone have any thoughts/input?

This is bad news. I was hoping to get my o2sim installed when it warmed up

Originally Posted by pat

This is bad news. I was hoping to get my o2sim installed when it warmed up

I'm surprised that more people are not having this issue. Some people have gone thousands of miles on the O2sim too with no engine lights coming on...

I couldn't pass because I'm still throwing codes. Also - you will not pass a visual inspection if you are not running cats.

Just a heads up, but I am running stock software with supersprint headers and supersprint cats and I have no CEL. My code reader lists a 'pending' code for the rear o2 and the light came on briefly for a day, but I have been driving around for 2 weeks now. I had the shark injector installed, but removed it so I can have a custom tune done(being installed next week).

If you are running the Supersprint cats you might get the smog guy to let you pass on a visual, but that is a very slim chance. Your car has the pending rear O2 sensor codes because well..... it's looking the rear O2 signal to mimic a good catalytic converter.
You didn't say what O2 sensors you had hooked up and where, but I would think that if those cats are of a decent cell count (some way they measure the cats?) it might work. I would try installing O2 sensor bungs after your cats and installing the rear O2 sensors there, the tricky part then becomes finding connectors.
I dont know what kind of junkyards you have where your at but I was able to cut some connectors out of a car that had been in a crazy wreck and the engine harness was incomplete. One more thing, I would recommend using twisted pair wire wire to cut down on interference, you can find this in long lengths in most body wiring harnesses for the cars audio system.