A/F do you know whats really going on with your car

[onelessissue]

i have had so many questions on a/f and o2 sensors i decided to write up a post for everyone to read and expand you mind just kinda stay with me on this one there is alot to be learned and said and im not sure i can remeber it all to write it down

5 gas analysis and wide band o2 are one of the most important things you can do for your car 5 gas has kinda faded out over the years and there hard to get ahold of but now witht the tuner world there coming back they where oringaly used as emissions recording devices but now people are learning of there beifit with performance appsa 5 gas mechine looks at 5 gases duh they are co2,co,hc,o2,nox this might not mean much to you but im going to inclue a link that explance the gasesbut here are some or the many things you can tell from a 5 gas Any condition that can cause a misfire can result in high HC. Things to look for include ignition problems, vacuum leaks, compression problems, injector deposits and out-of-whack cylinder balance. Keep in mind that an air pump makes little difference on a misfire, because the misfire supplies its own oxygen. Carbon monoxide is formed in the combustion chamber when there is insufficient oxygen to complete the combustion process. For diagnostic purposes, CO is an indicator of richness (air/fuel ratios less than 14.7:1).CO failures are usually due to too much fuel (bad sensor input, high fuel pressure, evap failure, etc.) or too little air (dirty air filter, blocked intake, etc)Gasoline is a mixture of many different hydrocarbons. So it doesn't take a genius to figure out that HC in the exhaust is indicative of unburned fuel. Some amount of HC will always be present in the exhaust due to fuel too close to a cool combustion chamber wall and large fuel droplets that burn on the outside only. Lots of HC means incomplete combustion due to engine misfire. these are just a few here is a link that will tell you morehttp://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h56.pdfok so i got your minds turning on 5 gas tho i didn't even start to define all you can do with this if you have more questions please ask

NOW on to wide band o2's

one thing about o2 sensors and somthing that bugs the hell out of me people that have crappy narow band air fuel gauges unless you just wanna look pretty and replace o2 sensors these things are CRAP! when you splice into you o2 to use them your changing the signal that your computer gets and you putting extra load on your sensor so it runs worse and ruins your sensor not to mention there useless they show you what the computer sees cross counts now unless your a math wiz and count the cross counts and compute them into lamba in your head in .054 milseconds they tell you nothing excet that senor is working right if you didn't have your gauge hooked up now if you want a a/f gauge save your money get a wide band with its own sensor that will tell you whats up and help you turn your car not destroy it a/f is the most over looked and most important ting to gettin your car running at your best your crappy 60$ gauge wont tell you anything sorry if i offened anyone but no one i have ever talked that has these gauges understood what they are seeing or doing to there car so just letting people knowim here to help and you wouldn't beleave the # of people that have all these mods on there cars and just have a cheap airfuel gauge and don't want going on witht there motor and the fry it i am the a/f nazi i learned how to tune and dyno cars from some of the best in the world lingifelter racing and head of motec engineering, leitzinger racing just to name a few and any of these guys will tell you a/f is the most important thing you can do to your car because if its not right you car isn't running its best and if you don't have the right moitoring device how do you knwo what ti is you can blow the motor real quick my friend dwane wattson wrote a artical in hot rod mag. about a/f one of the best ive ever read check it out i think everone should read it

A wideband o2 sensor system will give you far greater tuning ability than a narrowband sensor. The problem with a narrowband sensor is that it is only truly accurate at 14.7:1 AFR. The factory will have tuned your engine to run around at 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio (AFR). This is the ‘chemically correct’ or ‘stoicheometric’ (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’s also the proper mixture for the catalytic converter to best be able to do it’s job, in other words, you car comes tuned from the factory for reduced emissions and that's why that narrowband sensor is there. Therefore it 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 you’ll want to tune for somewhere between 12 and 13:1 (NA) or richer (FI) most likely and the narrowband won’t tell you anything useful at that range. Likewise at cruise you may not want to tune for 14.7:1, maybe you want better fuel economy at cruise and you want to tune to 15.5:1 or even a bit leaner (as lean as 16.5-17:1). Only a wideband can give you accurate feedback outside of the stoich 14.7:1 reading that NB sensors are designed for, and allow you to tune for best power and best economy. you wont see a single one of my cars that dosn't have a perfect 13.0 the whole rpm range and it has picked me up as much as 20 hp in areas of my map i made my 300zx 1.3 seconds faster just because i tuned my a/f correctly

please hit me back with questions and input a/f is my bigest thing and i love to interduce it to people
Modified by onelessissue at 8:08 AM 4/7/2007