Wideband o2 sensor versus narrowband o2 – what’s the difference?
A wideband o2 sensor system will give you far greater tuning ability than a narrowband o2 sensor. The challenge with a narrowband sensor is that it is only truly accurate at 14.7:1 AFR (the stoichiometric air/fuel ratio for gasoline). The factory will most likely have tuned your engine to run around at 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio (AFR) at cruise and light load conditions. This is the ‘chemically correct’ or ‘stoichiometric’ (stoich for short) AFR which basically means this is the air/fuel mixture at which the most complete burn of the fuel will occur. It happens to also be the proper mixture for the catalytic converter to best do it’s job. In other words, your car comes tuned from the factory for reduced emissions and that’s why that narrowband sensor is there.
Therefore a narrowband will be useful for tuning cruise Air/Fuel Ratio (AFR) only as long as you’re tuning for 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio. However, under Wide Open Throttle (WOT) you’ll want to tune for somewhere between 12.6:1 and 13:1 on a naturally aspirated motor, or richer for forced induction, and the narrowband won’t tell you anything useful at that range beyond ‘you are richer than 14.7:1 but I don’t know by how much’. Likewise at cruise you may not want to tune for 14.7:1, maybe you want to ‘lean burn’ chasing better fuel economy at cruise and you want to tune to 15.5:1 or even a bit leaner possibly. That narrowband sensor can again only tell you ‘you are leaner than 14.7:1 but I don’t know by how much’. Only a wideband o2 sensor and controller can give you accurate feedback outside of the stoichiometric 14.7:1 reading that NB sensors are designed for, and allow you to tune for best power and best economy.
You need solid data to tune your engine right.
In short, a wideband oxygen sensor will give you a measurement of your Air/Fuel Ratio from about 10:1 up to about 20:1 AFR allowing you to target exactly the AFR you’re after at all times. If you’re running a naturally aspirated car on a road racing course, you might target 12.5:1 – 13:1 range under heavy load/throttle. If you’re running a turbocharged land speed car down the Bonneville Salt Flats, you might target 11:1, or possibly richer. A wideband o2 sensor gives you the data you and your ECU need to be able to tune that properly. While a narrowband can only tell you when it’s 14.7:1, and is therefore nearly useless for tuning for anything other than a steady cruise condition.
Here are some of our most popular wideband 2 sensor products: