What is everyones fasination with Wideband O2's?

[powerhouse]

Please let me know what everyones fasination with Wideband O2 sensors are? Please tell me something i dont know!

thanks

Powerhouse

:PIMP:

[Brian]

Pretty essential too for tuning. I could care less what my car puts down. I need to spend some time tuning.

[john]

I can only speak to turbocharged applications, as that's what I know a bit about. Tuning a forced induction car is more or less achieving a specific Air/Fuel (A/F) ratio at WOT across the RPM band. EFI vehicles are constantly varying the Injector Pulse Width (IPW) when the car is running at non-WOT (Wide Open Throttle). If you have some way to monitor the O2 sensor voltage which is being sent to the ECU, it's constanty changing. The ECU is trying to achieve 14.7:1, but due to the constantly varying load on the engine, it's never going to get there.

So, it tries to get as close to a perfect average as possible.

A wideband O2 sensor will display what your A/F ratio is, in numbers that the lay person can understand. 12.0.1 - 11.5:1, 10.8:1 etc etc. The lower the number, the richer the car is running. My car is 100% untuned, as I've never had access to a functional wideband O2 sensor. I would tune my car for 11.0:1 on pump gas and 11.8:1 or so on race gas. Maybe 12.0:1, but due to the big boost that my car can run, I'd rather stay a bit on the rich side, lose a few HP and stay safe.

Trying to tune without a wideband O2 sensor is a shot in the dark. Using the stock O2 sensor voltage isn't good enough, as it's not all that accurate. It provides enough information to allow the ECU to squirt enough fuel to match the amount of air which the engine is consuming, which is a good thing. This is for a stock setup, and the OEM engineers have built the parts to manage the stock setup. Once you move beyond the stock setup, you need additional tools to help you out.

There are a few DIY (Do It Yourself) in-car wideband O2 sensors out there, build around the Honda lean burn 0-5 volt O2 sensor (stock O2 sensor measures from 0 to 1 volt). For around $500. I'd buy that if I were keeping the car and wanted to tune it in the real world. Tuning on a dyno is good, and is better than not tuning, but tuning on the street is where you'll be able to REALLY dial it in.

Reading EGTs is also good, but you need an EGT probe & gauge for each exhaust manifold runner. Reading the collective EGT is fine, but if you have 1 cylinder go lean, the collective EGT reading isn't going to tell you that. WIth that said, it's still a good tool to have. I've got boost, EGT, fuel pressure and O2 sensor voltage gauges in my car. If I had the $500 I'd also have the DIY wideband O2...

$0.02 worth.

[gjcivic]

do you have anymore info on this DIY mod? Links or anything

[Mr. NoSkills]

http://www.techedge.com.au/vehicle/wbo2/default.htm

here is the one I'm getting.
For an extra $90 they will put the kit together and calibrate the readout for you and everything.
I plan on ordering it with my small small tax refund, I'll let you know how it turns out =)

[Brian]

so those only run about 110.00 ? If so I am ordering one tomorrow. That is insanely low for a wideband o2. The kits i'm used to seeing are around 900+. I may have to contact those guys about becoming a distributor if they are interested in selling a lot of the pre-built kits.

[john]

http://diy-efi.org/diy_efi/projects/diy_wb/

Another source for a nearly identical setup.

[gjcivic]

sweet. thanx. This ma sound stupid, b could you just use the honda O2 sensor with an autometer gauge? Probably not, eh?

[TedR719]

Nice, I wanna get it

[Generic]

Auto meter A/F Gauge? They aren't precise enough, or is the sensor. But, if you want a idea, then get a corrected A/F gauge from
http://www.gadgetseller.com

I have one in my car, the digital 02 in Red.

Murdock

[john]

Nope. There is some voodoo electronics needed to process the O2 sensor input into something which we humans can understand.

The stock O2 sensor which "consumer" A/F gauges get their input from produce from 0 to 1 volts. The wideband O2 sensors produce from 0 to 5 volts.

Originally posted by gjcivic
sweet. thanx. This ma sound stupid, b could you just use the honda O2 sensor with an autometer gauge? Probably not, eh?

[Mr. NoSkills]

Originally posted by 99SIVTEC
so those only run about 110.00 ? If so I am ordering one tomorrow. That is insanely low for a wideband o2. The kits i'm used to seeing are around 900+. I may have to contact those guys about becoming a distributor if they are interested in selling a lot of the pre-built kits.

They have many options. But their fully built kits come with everything except the o2 sensor because it's cheaper to get it here, but if you really really want to, they can get it for you.
I think the put together kits with the gauge and case are like $250, then another $100 for the sensor.
or if you just wan the pcb board put together, with no gauge and just plug it into your standalone it's like $150.
even cheaper if you know what your doing and want to solder it all together =)

I just got an e-mail that said they are not quite ready to ship the fully built units yet, within weeks he said though.

[TedR719]

did these guys answer your question? Someone that advertises for the dyno shold know this stuff, unless you are just testing us :)


Originally posted by powerhouse
Please let me know what everyones fasination with Wideband O2 sensors are? Please tell me something i dont know!

thanks

Powerhouse

:PIMP: