I am very curious about Widebands (which are very confusing to me) and if they would be beneficial to me at all. I'm not exactly sure how they work or why they're valuable. If i got one and had a performance shop help me out, could i gain some power/efficiency?
They tell you your air to fuel ratio relatively precicely. If you can do something with that sort of information, one could find one useful.
Paul_VR6 wrote: They tell you your air to fuel ratio relatively precicely. If you can do something with that sort of information, one could find one useful.
Right. What do you do accordingly based on your readings? Adjust timing or something?
Think of a standard O2 sensor as an 'idiot light', where the wideband is more like a gauge. A standard O2 sensor can tell you that you're rich, lean or somewhere in between. The wideband will show you all the gradations in between. If you're doing your own tuning of spark and fuel, you'll want to know the difference between 'slightly enriched' and 'stupid rich', between 'lean cruise' and 'DANGEROUS!'
The something is adjust fueling. Turn a screw, change a jet, hit a laptop key, etc.
Megamanual.com and the sds efi site both have lots of general tuning information
So is there much use for one in a HPDE street/track car? (A car that competes with no one, but still needs to be competent on track.)
If you plan to try to mod your motor or otherwise tune it for more power then think of it like a safety precaution.
Would you turbo your car without a working boost gauge?
EdenPrime wrote: So is there much use for one in a HPDE street/track car? (A car that competes with no one, but still needs to be competent on track.)
Only if you have a means to tune it.
no point on a relatively stock engine with mild bolt ons...
if you are adding significant amounts of air and/or fuel then yes you need one.
It might be useful for an "oh no I am going lean due to fuel pump cavitatation in turn 3!" but I am not sure how common that is ;)
First, don't bother with one unless you have some kind of aftermarket ECU that can use it. Second, gains just from switching to a wideband system are very small, they're more about longevity than power gains really, and that's only an issue on highly modded, usually boosted engines.
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