Air/Fuel Gauge on Carb setup?????

[Blown331LX]

Ive heard mixed opinions about the use of which style to run, Narrow band or Wideband on my car. Specs are 302, alum heads, long tubes, f303, holly 750 dp, MSD dizzy and box. Some people say you can use a narrow band O2 on a carb car because it will read rich all the time, Autometer says "Use a wideband". Im not running a standalone system, or using the o2 as a computer controlled input. All I simply want is an air/fuel gauge in the car for tuning. And Id like to have 2, one for each back. So my questions are: (1) Who has run which and which setup is best? (2) Can I use stock style O2 sensors to run the narrow band gauge? All input is welcome.

 

[865.0HO]

I've got the Edelbrock narrow band in my carbed Bronco and love it. I wanted something for fine tuning the carb without spending a bunch of money.

That being said, the wideband will be a better setup, but also a lot more expensive.

 

[Blown331LX]

Which edlebrock gauge do you have? The light bar or the sweep guage? Ive heard that a narrow band on a carb setup almost always reads rich......

 

[Black1987Stang]

I wouldn't rely on a narrowband to tune it with. I would get a wideband, then you know for sure what it is. I just got the DM-100 with wideband setup from www.plxdevices.com It's the slickest wideband controller I've ever seen. I can post up some pics if you're interested.

 

[Blown331LX]

Yeah please do. Nice car by the way, 1990 GT hatch just got a fresh 4 base and 4 clear of black metallic on the way to being just right. My concern is if you only have 1 wideband 02..(1) Where does it mount? (2) Id assume one of the 02 bings in one of the headers but how is that accurate cause ur only getting one bank?? (3) wouldnt 2 narrow band air/fuel one in each bank be better??? Thx Chris

 

[865.0HO]

Mine is the light bar.

 

[SmockDoiley]

Two would be better, but remember, you have a carburetor not 8 injectors so whatever is spraying out of the central carburetor should be getting evenly dispersed throughout the engine. So unless you have a serious engine problem or you unevenly tampered with the settings on the carb, ie. mismatched jets or vast differences in the idle screws, whatever you read on one side is most likely going to be the same on the other.

 

[HISSIN50]

You always like to monitor the weakest (leanest) area. The issue with carbs is that often times the distribution is not equal for each cylinder (runner disparity). With EFI, this is less of a concern.

 

[Blown331LX]

Will the narrow band be accurate? I hate to buy 2 narrow bands if they wont read right. Can I use stock type 02 sensors to feed them????

 

[Black1987Stang]

Here's mine, this is the AFR on 1 of the 4 already uploaded gauges in it, you can upload more gauges for free and make your own, and also upload pictures from ur computer onto the screen as a background to a gauge, I put a few pics on and it looks awesome, its like a mini digital tv. It can read afr, vacuum, egt, oil pressure, water temp, etc. etc. Any color you see can be changed to almost whatever color you want. You can see how I changed the different colors below, some of the other gauges are graphing with a X and Y axis like an ossciliscope, numeric just like a normal wideband gauge with the numbers going up n down, one that can show 4 gauge results on the same screen. If you're really interested I can upload a short vid of the different screens and menus and all that. I paid about 450 shipped for the DM-100 and the wideband (called the SM-AFR). I think it's one of the coolest things in my car and also has narrowband output to simulate the narrowband stock 02 sensor and has an additional wideband output for use in a datalogger like my Tweecer R/T.

Here's one of the gauges set to all blue

 

[lang williams]

I'm considering the edelbrock guage myself for when i get the new beast up an runnin. The most affordable wide band reader i've seen online was around $270. i was thinking i could move the o2 sensor an take a reading on both sides of the h pipe an block the other side off.