wideband oxygen sensor

[hondance]

Just wondering if anyone out there done a conversion from conventional oxygen sensor to wideband oxygen sensor. according to some article i just read, wideband oxygen sensor provide a precise indication of the exact air/fuel ratio, and over a much broader range of mixtures - all the way from 0.7 lambda (11:1 air/fuel ratio) to straight air! as we all know, air/fuel ratio is critical with high performance, turbocharged and supercharged engines to make power and to keep the engine from leaning out at high rpm and boost pressures. If the mixture leans out, it can send the engine into self-destructing detonation.

[civickiller]

yes that can happen to you engine is you run lean.

what are you asking ? your wondering if anyone has done it ? or if anyone knows how to wire it up ? or are you just trying to inform us ?

imo, i think anybody who turbos there car without a wideband hooked up is a dumbass who doesnt know about tuning and cars.

[97CivicX]

Originally Posted by civickiller

imo, i think anybody who turbos there car without a wideband hooked up is a dumbass who doesnt know about tuning and cars.

or they dont have a few hundred to spend on the kit and get their car tuned on a dyno..

your ecu reads a/f as 0-1 volts. even if you got a wideband and hooked it up in place of your old o2 sensor, you still need a narrowband output, which a lot of the controllers come with. wideband is very useful for you but not much use for the car's computer

[hondance]

Originally Posted by civickiller

yes that can happen to you engine is you run lean.

what are you asking ? your wondering if anyone has done it ? or if anyone knows how to wire it up ? or are you just trying to inform us ?

imo, i think anybody who turbos there car without a wideband hooked up is a dumbass who doesnt know about tuning and cars.

Yeah I like to convert mine to wideband Oxygen sensor. I just baught some NOs, the laughing gas but not hooked up yet. I think i need this wideband O2 sensor to protect my engine from getting so lean when Im running NOs.

Sounds like you have the wideband oxygen sensor hook up on yours and so i like to know how you did it. also if you got this thing hook up, you can now tune your engine without using a dyno right? can you explain how?

[casperGSR]

what kinda car/engine is it that you're putting the juice into and what type of fuel management are you using?... to my knowledge you can't wire in a lambda sensor into a OBDII ecu and expect it to comprehend it... you can wire it in seperately from the ecu and just be able to monitor the readings but they won't be able to have an actual effect on the A/F ratio as far as changing the fuel trims within the ecu.

[civickiller]

what brand wideband do you have and what model ? what do you plan on using for fuel enrichment ?

you can tune your fuel, not timing, for WOT. you cant really tune for partial throttle because you have no idea what vacuum your at so you dont know what the afr should be. but then also if your only tuning with a fpr then any fuel you add at WOT will be added everywhere throughout the map. but they do sell widebands that can datalog.

well basically when you get the wideband hooked up, just start driving around and making sure its working. then hit WOT and make sure the afr goes rich, it will probably read like 13.5 around there. im not to sure what the afr should be on nitrous, i know on turbos ist around 11.5-12 but i heard for nitrous it should be like 11.0

[civickiller]

you can, you just need to replace the primary o2 with the wideband

[casperGSR]

Originally Posted by civickiller

you can, you just need to replace the primary o2 with the wideband

how is the ecm going to be able to read the 0-5 volt from the wideband reading when all it knows how to do is read the 0-1 volt reading from teh stock O2 sensor?

[civickiller]

most widebands come with a narrowband analog output, which gives the stock ecu the 0-1v its looking for. you just have to wire your stock wire in with the wideband. it comes with a wire for it

[casperGSR]

but it doesn't actually register the wideband reading and just calculates the narrow band reading in the fuel trim maps which is essentially the same as having a regualr o2 sensor correct? meaning it allows the driver to get a real reading (wideband) but the computer is still calculating the fuel trims based on the narrow band, correct?

[civickiller]

the wideband sends the same single as a narrowbad to the ecu. the ecu never sees the wideband output.

so yeah the ecu still reads narrow only while the driver see the actual afr wideband

[GScivic7]

Originally Posted by JDMgirly

So on wideband O2 sensor you get steady 14.7:1 air-fuel ratio from idle to wide open throttle right? What if your other sensors are sending out of range or wrong signal to your ECU?

You'll get a CEL. The wideband 02 sensor doesn't control your A/F ratio, it just reads it. It's a great thing to have if you have some sort of good fuel management system and want to tune yourself.

[civickiller]

sensors around the engine only slightly control fueling. for example the stock ecu has its maps already set in the ecu, it works by vacuum vs rpm to get the amount of fuel delivered, the sensors only slightly change the amount of fuel.

an example, your driving your car at xxx vacuum and at xxx rpm, so your ecu is reading down that xxx vacuum column till it find the xxx rpm in that column. theres a fuel number there, so right there your ecu delievers that amount of fuel. and thats how you get the fuel amount. there are the other sensors that enrich the fuel alittle or lean out alittle when needed but generally it stays around that amount. like it could read alitle more rich if the IAT was reading cold air.

so in a sense it does control your afr, but it also doesnt. like say you got your stock 81mm bore ls with your stock ls ecu. its matched perfect so its all good. but then say you bore hte ls to 84mm and still run the stock ecu. well you got alot more air in there but the ecu is made for the 81mm bore, not hte 84mm bore so you run lean because you have more air but not enough fuel.

[civickiller]

also the target afr isnt always 14.7. only on very light throttle do you want your afr to be 14.7, you want your afr to be richer as vacuum goes up.

a wideband doesnt control your afr, the only thing a wideband does is tell you what your exact afr is. the ecu cant read widebands.

[casperGSR]

so getting back to the original question there's really no point to converting over to a wideband O2 sensor on a stock ecu, however if you have either a standalone or piggyback unit then the wideband can be of some use because you can therefore make changes to the maps... so with that said we need more info on your car, engine, mods and fuel management.