What is a WIDE BAND 02 sensor and what is the diference between one that is " wide band " and one that isn't????

Any advantage to either?

I've noticed that some of the tuning software that works on a Palmpilot needs a wide band 02 sensor and shows the EGT and the air-fuel mixture right on the Palmpilot.

 

Generically speaking a wide band O2 is accurate from 10:1 and 20:1 AF ratio, where a narrow band was made to be cheap and work for stoich ONLY, and is not accurate outside of its range (its range being low throttle daily driving).

So for dyno tuning a wideband is used.

 

An O2 sensor measures the AFR (Air Fuel Ratio) of the exhaust gasses. A regular O2 sensor like you see installed in just about every vehicle on the road is basically a switch. It tells the computer if the mixture is rich or lean, but not by how much. The PCM rapidly switches between rich and lean which in effect keeps the car almost perfectly at stoich.

A wideband O2 sensor (and associated hardware) actually measures the AFR. The stock narrowband O2 sensors are ONLY good for tuning an engine during cruise. To accurately tune the fuel mixture for WOT you require a wideband O2. Commercial setups are very expensive (running in excess of $1000 easily). There are some more inexpensive DIY versions out there that use a lean burn, Honda Civic, wideband O2 sensor. You can't simply replace your current O2 sensors with wideband units.

 

Yep, voltage outputs of the widebands, and thier connectors aren't the same as a narrow band.

A Palm is something a good number of folks have, and can be had inexpensively, so its an easy solution for getting a display AND logging possibilities.

 

I prefer to have the PCM log the data alongside everything else