So what will I notice if i upgrade to a wideband. Is it really worth 200+ dollars and the work to weld in a new bung?
I can understand this being useful in full on race engines. however from what i see when i watch videos of people using wide band A/F gauges they react almost exactly the same as my narrow band.
As in my narrow band will read stochastic at idle and hold there it will read nothing when i lift off the gas and am costing and will read rich when the engine is cold. So is it worth it? At some point soon ill be up grading to a KAT with stock internals and a T25 turbo. But this will never be a 300 HP engine in my hands. What I want is a turboed KA that runs solid.
Trust me, narrow band is what it is, not an exact indication of how your afr’s are and the limited range it’s able to do it which is useless and less function than lights going up and down. Get a wide band especially if your going turbo on the KA, you’ll need it partly to properly tune it.
the thing is if my narrow band will detect stoch then so long as i have my injectors and timing tuned (when i turbo it) so that it reads stoch at idle and a little rich at higher RPM then whats the problem with it. My narrow band can handle this perfectly. I never see my rich peek off the gauge. So if it can read all of this and looks to be correct then i have to find reason to buy a wideband other then the fact that everyone on son says its the cool thing to do.
I would honestly like to see something that could give me an idea of why i should get one. why do I need something that accurate. what is the gain? I want to know that if i spend 270 bucks on a wideband will it provide me with such an amazing tune over a narrow band that i can say yes that was worth it.
the only thing i have ever seen someone do with a wideband that looked like something youll never be able to do with a narrow band is that they hooked the car up to a dino and could graft an A/F chart with it on a computer.
a wideband wont tune your car for you. its a GAUGE. it just tells you things.
a narrowband afr gauge is useless. it doesn’t tell you the things you need to know. at all. it will just tell you anything above 14.7 = lean, and anything below 14.7 = rich
example: your AFR is at 13:1 at wide open throttle, full load. this is at or approaching a dangerously lean condition in a turbo application. but your narrowband gauge will still show it as rich. this = bad medicine
the reason to get a wideband is because what it tells you is actually useful. it will tell you the DEGREE to which you are running lean or rich and will produce a usable AFR value
a wideband serves as USABLE FEEDBACK (as opposed to a narrowband that serves as a christmas decoration) to tell you how your tune is controlling the mixture. this lets you accurately modify the tune to be within the AFR range you want
Interesting thank you for the explanation. Ok so that makes a bit more sense. i figured they both did the same thing but one used 0-1 volts and the other used 12 making one more accurate only.