Fitech running fat

Is your AFR reading or is it stuck at 14.7 and the exhaust smells and looks pig rich?
I had this happen to me twice and the way I fixed it was I disconnected the battery, shorted the positive and negative cables together (I used a jumper cable) for about 10 minutes. When I reconnected the battery and started it the AFR was back to reading normally and it didn't smell it look rich. Hopefully this will help.
The afr is tracking but its definately wrong as its smokes and backfires randomly through exhaust. Ive never heard of shorting the + - together. How does that help? Thanks!