So can I use any air fuel guage on my GSLSE. I've heard all the guage needs is a reading from an O2 sensor. Whats up?

 

yea they just need a signal from the o2 sensor to work.

 

Wideband or narrow? I don't see any fuel management in your sig line, so what do you need one for? Narrow band is a pretty light show and not much else. If you want to do some fuel tuning, get a wideband and some way to adjust your afrs.

 

I agree narrowband a/f gauges are useless, I wish I had used the $50 for something else. It basically tells you nothing, and if you have an air pump and cat hooked up it jumps around randomly and really isn't accurate at all.

 

The transfer function of a narrow band O2 is about as linear as a light switch. While not completely useless -- you at least know if you are rich or lean -- it's not exactly very useful either. Wide Band O2 is much more affordable than it has been in the past, but I don't trust the consumer-grade systems for long-term street use or any critical tuning.

EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) is quite an affordable, durable and reliable alternative means to tune an engine and monitor its performance. Basically, you shoot for a known-good temp, which tells you the engine has the right fuel mixture and ignition timing. There is a bit more skill involved in interpreting EGT, but it is a very useful tool. There are also dual EGT gauges, so you can see the tuning balance between rotors! You would be amazed to see the variations between rotors in different situations. FDs, for example, go lean on the front rotor at low RPM/load and then transition to lean on the rear rotor at high RPM/load. The problem is the manifold, which does not flow equally. You can see this with EGT. On a wideband O2, all you see is the average fuel mixture. We recently had some special dual gauges manufactured for us exclusively, which feature a 2000ºF max reading and are marked "F" & "R" (front and rear) instead of "R" & "L" (right and left). There may be a Group Buy on them soon >> HERE <<

 

Where to find low buck Wideband O2 air fuel meters?

 

hmm so whats the difference? So is wideband the one with a screen and digital readout? and narrow is the red, yellow, and red dial? No engine management system other than stock ECU so I'm just shooting to see where I'm at....

 

No. Wideband oxygen sensors are the ones priced in the hundreds of dollars and state "Wideband O2" on the box of complicated electronics that allow it to function. The output is usually given in a 0-5 volt range, with a transfer function that looks like a sloping straight line. In addition to the Nernst cell, they have a heater cell, reference cell and an oxygen pump cell. A Digital Signal Processor is required to manage all the variables to create the consistent linear output.

Narrowband oxygen sensors are EVERYTHING ELSE. Single wire, two-wire, three-wire, heated, unheated, yadda yadda. These output a 0-1 volt signal whose transfer function looks like an "S" on its side. The ONLY place it is accurate is at stoichiometric (14.67:1). People like to pretend the voltage is meaningful elsewhere but the idea is absurd. Fancy displays are just a gimic to make them seem more accurate than they are.

The first truly affordable wideband 02 sensor is made by Innovate Motorsports. Their basic system, called the LM-1 is something like $350. Dynojet also makes one in the $500 range, last time I checked. Before these came along, the typcial price for a commercial unit was around a grand.

 

BTW, narrowband oxygen sensors are used in OEM systems for "closed loop" cruising economy. Basically, they lean the engine out until it sees a lean voltage, adds fuel back until it gets a rich voltage, leans it back out, richens it back up, back and forth in a cycle. Rich, lean, rich, lean, rich lean... By bouncing it back and forth, it is basically running stoich. The rest of the time, the ECU just runs "open loop", ignoring the Oxygen sensor. They just use it for fuel economy when cruising. That's the time when you see a narrowband O2 gauge looking irratic, but it's really serving a purpose.

 

good info blake, I agree with you that egt is much more useful.

 

I have a narrowband on my carb'd s/c gslse (I didn't know any better at the time of purchase). Yep, it is a light show, but it has proved useful. When it reads rich I know I am richer than stoich, when I was over rich (spit and sputter at top end) it read really rich (last green light lit). It does show lean when I am too lean as well. Buttttt, when I did the dyno test and could watch the actual reading on the dyno in comparison to my narrowband, it is nowhere near a real tuning tool. Yeah, real lean does mean lean! Real rich does mean real rich. But that only is in respect to when the last red or last green is lit. Anything else just means you are a little off stoich, so if you are running a turbo or s/c and want to be in the 11.0-11.7 range and your narrow band has all the green lit up indicating rich, you are not necessarily safe, in my case I was running at 12.8 when the narrowband indicated rich and "looked" safe. Autometer is coming out with wideband kits in september and I will be picking one up for my car. If you're thinking about a narrowband, it's a good light show for your pillar pod with only marginal functionality (meaning you cannot trust it), great for a fine running stock n/a car. Wait to see where Autometer prices theirs since it will be a standard fit guage and complete kit. Once installed I'll hit the dyno for comparison before I trust it.

 

Don't they also have the LC-1 that is the one that can't datalog though. So if you are looking for just a reading this seems like a good method. I think that it comes in a 52mm gauge and is around 400.