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Has anyone used a oxygen sensor in their exhaust pipes to tune a carburator ? It would be interesting to see how the voltmeter works while driving to see how rich or lean FE ( in my case a 410 ) is running at times .
Yes. My advice is to save your money and get a wide-band O2 setup. I see them on Ebay for about $275 or so. If you go with the narrow band setup, like you get from Summit or Jegs, you will not have the range or definition to effectively tune. Also, with a non-heated, narrow band unit the readings will change as the sensor changes temperature. My narrow band is going on Ebay as soon as I get the motivation to take it off the truck. I will be putting a wide-band on as soon as I get the money. It will have a numeric, real-time display accurate to one tenth. No more little red yellow and green lights.
thanks scouder this is interesting do you have your sensor mounted at the end of the tailpipe or close to the engine ? reason i ask is some have a sniffer to mount in the tailpipe or can go the sensor route ? but it would seem that by the time it gets a reading at the tailpipe the true readouts are lost ,,,,,
Last edited by RustyTrustyF150; Mar 7, 2006 at 12:37 PM.
Mine is mounted in the header collector. I think exhaust moves through the system pretty fast, so I don't think I'd worry that much about precise timing of the reading.
The narrow band O2 sensors are not by any means as worthwhile as the wide band O2 sensors, but it isn't a complete waste of time either.
The narrow band O2 sensors can be used to at least be an alert to an engine being abnormally lean. That alone will allow someone to avoid much more expensive engine damage that many people experience in this case.
Now this isn't going to be paramount in best carburetor tuning, but it since it does at least have the ability to indicate a problem that needs attention.
It is a better than the original nothing these trucks came with, but not the best we can have now method.
Ok I found this chart. It looks like a much higher voltage reading
narrow band is 0-1volt and wideband is 0-5Volts
Sensor are now aval for around $70.00
So for less then a 100 bucks you can get a sensor and a DVM to read it with.
I already have the DVM and have been using a narrowband ox sensor.just ordered a bosh wideband sensor.