PLX Devices - BAD - Don't buy

SON240sx Automotive
1

Guys,

when buying wideband O2, beware of PLX. their products look good on surface but for me it turned out to be a $800 mistake.

I bought their wideband R500 with datalogging and G sensor, EGT.

The idea was to be able to do mobile street / track dyno.

Issues:

  1. the G sensors values are skewed by 0.3G with flat ground and are not usable at all as good scientific measurement.
  2. Speed sensor readings cannot be configured to work with nissan - i am always going only 1/3 the speed
  3. because the speed and G sensor are always off, there is no way to do the mobile dyno.
  4. Knock sensor reading is always off, i am knocking more at idle than i am at 7000rpm.
  5. display is not readable at all under the sun. Looks great on the website though
  6. the instruction says to install a fan behind the unit as it overheats. The fan is not included.
  7. the LCD screen on the left side fades after long distance driving. Apparently the heat in the electronics are too close to the screen. support says just to turn it off from time to time or install a fan.
  8. data logging: it only logs 6 channels, from 6 input wires. However, if you want to log something that is already existing in the system like speed, knock, egt, etc. that costs you 1 each, and you have to physically wire it up for it to log. So, if the unit already has a RPM reading, you will need to reroute the rpm into one of the 6 input wires. Really dumb IMO.
  9. supports firmware flash. However, there has not been a firmware flash since 2005 when the product was released.

I confronted the support with many other PLX owners. PLX support tells us in response that they will fix the problem in the new R-800 which i will have to buy. There is no fix for our unit. It only makes me wonder how they can expect someone to buy a brand new wideband and have all these issues and then sell us something else to fix a problem that should not have been there in the first place.

I can only assume that this type of behavior will continue for their future products as well.

On their website, they have some new and exciting looking products coming up, but be sure to visit their support forum and see the kind of complaints before you even consider any of their products.

There are tons of good manufacturers out there now doing wideband. PLX is not one of them. Look to Innovate, AEM, zeitronix, etc…

I just wanted to share with you all my experience so you won’t have to make a costly mistake.

John

2

Sounds like you need to RTFM…

ALL my PLX devices have been amazing!

They are among the fastest and most accurate on the market.

3

Im not a fan of PLX either. Blew up a WRX motor because the knock wire was providing too much resistance when hooked up to the knock sensor wire on the ecu on the subaru. PLX would not admit any fault.

4

i was running a plx m300 … worked fine for me

5

buying their large units is stupid thye are junky, but the wideband /guages are fine… all thier products seem to have poor planning tho…

6

i love my plx wideband

no complaints from pantaloons

7

what’s a pantaloon?

8

I have a PLX M-300 and it has never gave me any problems at all.

9

Well, i suppose the R300 one is fine as i had no problem with purely the wideband.

Wideband works fine, but their top of the line R500 that i bought was the problem. The screen was an LCD display that really reeked. Mobile dyno, G-sensor, speed sensor and Knock sensing were all off. The screen overheating also did not help. For the entry level R series widebands, it doesn’t have any of those features and I suppose for that reason it works well.

10

Google defines pantaloon as:

A comic character, traditionally an old man foppishly dressed, who becomes the butt of a joke, often a cruel one. …