Lots of people Misunderstanding A/F gauges (narrow Band)

I'm doing a search and I've noticed that ALOT of people think its just a dancing light that does nothing... Hopefully this quote will clear a few things up.

The OEM O2 sensor is a "narrowband" sensor; it only does the small job it has to do. This job is to tell the ECU when it is lean or rich; not how rich or lean, just a general idea. It does this job, and it does it well. If you hook it up to an a/f gauge and it says the car is running lean, then it is running lean. If it says it's running rich, then it's running rich.

The reason it does not work well in high-performance cars is that the range you want to keep the a/f ratio at is usually not at 14.7:1, it is usually lower. Therefore, when you try to tune it at a lower ratio, it gets very inaccurate. Whether it be 13.0:1 or 8.0:1, the guage and sensor will only read rich.

One thing you have to think about is this: the gauge only reads what the sensor tells it; no more, no less. If the sensor was NOT doing its job, then your car would run like crap from the factory. But it does do its job; people just don't like the fact that it doesn't do anything more than necessary.

So the point I would like to make is that an a/f gauge on the stock O2 sensor is NOT worthless; it WILL tell you if you're running rich or lean. But it will NOT help you very much at tuning, especially if you are running much higher HP levels than stock.
 
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Funny you post this because I was just debating installing my phantom series one or not. I'm going to be running a zex 100 shot after this weekend, so maybe it would be a good thing, but who knows. I dont want a boat load of wires runnin all over my car and ****
 
Yeah, I'm not going out and telling people to buy one, but I'm just saying they do serve a purpose. When dealing with a motor I'd like to know what my O2 sensors are telling it because it can be the difference between running safe and buying a new motor.
 
Nope, it only tells you if your lean or rich. Tell me, if you have modifications to your car and MIL Eliminators and you were running at the track and your check engine light came on but your car seemed to run fine. Would you stop running your car or would you think one of your MILs went bad?

I know I bought one because I'm still running my car with stock fuel and internals but I'm running a 150 shot on a chip that was actually burnt for another car. I needed to make sure I wasn't dipping too lean. I'd love to have bought a wideband sensor but they start at $300 for the gauge, controller and new O2 sensor. Wideband for me right now would be kind of pointless over a Narrowband because I'm not to a stage yet where I'm tuning my car to a point where I need it.