What are wide band O2's used for?

[Qualitywires.com]

What are wide band O2\'s used for?

When increasing power with the v-10 engine, is the wide band O2 sensors necessary part of the tuning or is it not? What purpose does it serve?

 

[Vipermed 97.01]

Re: What are wide band O2\'s used for?

Wide band 02s are the most crucial tool of tuning the viper especially in s.c and T.C applications as you will get real time readings of your air/fuel ratio.

 

[Dyno Dave]

Re: What are wide band O2\'s used for?

It is one of the tools I use every day at DCX for calibrating the Viper development engines.

 

[Nadine UK GTS]

Re: What are wide band O2\'s used for?

Reads much quicker and more times per second than the OE O2s, as Tony said you get real time, accuracy.

Don't think they last as long as stock O2s and can coat up in street applications.

 

[Dyno Dave]

Re: What are wide band O2\'s used for?

I'll elaborate somewhat:

The std O2's have no real fuel/air resolution. They simply switch or toggle back and forth depending on whether the exhaust gas is lean or rich. How much it is lean or rich is not a factor. Under steady state conditions it dithers back and forth feeding that information to the pcm and it adjusts the fuel/air mixture to stoichiometric. This is running in closed-loop.

When you want full power the O2's no longer feedback information to the pcm and the engine is in open-loop. This is where the wide-range O2 can give you the information to deliver peak power.

A wide-range O2 can readout the specific fuel/air ratio of the exhaust gas. If you are trying to tune for peak power you would try to get the fuel/air ratio to about 0.0750. Or you could do a fuel/air sweep and determine which fuel/air ratio works best for your engine by holding the engine at a steady state and watching the torque output. Once you know this bit of information you can go about changing the open-loop fuel surface to get this fuel/air ratio.

One caveat, beware of air leaks!