The problem isnt really finding the sensor, i've found a few for sale. The problem is finding one that isnt $400! The people that have these things know that they are like gold right now, ****** bastards always out to make a buck.

does the hx use the same sensor too? i have a sensor from my vx motor with about 110k on it. how much more life can i expect from it?

Reading this makes me happy I picked up the right sensor 3 years ago for $99. Too bad its still in the box since I haven't installed it yet.


Hmmmm, could I actually get $400 for it? That would be some easy money.

heh heh

Randy

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SEFI8LOxCivic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">would u know if the LSU4 bosch sensor is lead resistant or not? </TD></TR></TABLE>

I have no personal back to back data on them in lead bearing exhaust streams. Your previous comments on the NTK have been observed by others. NTK only states: "The sensor should be used in an exhaust gas which has a small content of harmful materials for the sensor. Therefore take care of fuel additives."

If I smear the Bosch specification a bit they do have a table of fuel lead content in g/liter with expected life until "degraded". To put you on the page at about 0.5 g Pb/liter in the fuel expect a service life in excess of 10K miles..... (those are not the exact numbers they quote, but it gives you a feel for the performance if my German is correct.....)

Now keep in mind the margin in a production car defined as "degraded" may not be acceptable to us in a highly boosted/blown application. When we have a 10K to 50K engine at risk on the tuning of these sensors, we really should recalibrate them like any scientist would at regular intervals against a known standard...... (Now there's a retirement business for me! ... send me your sensor and controller and I'll calibrate it...)

Regards,
BigMoose

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sak &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">But can you at least open the window a bit if NTK actually agrees to sell only to Honda?

Secondly what about the Civic VX? Do you know if the Honda dealers will still offer this sensor for these cars?</TD></TR></TABLE>

NTK told me that they will continue to supply Honda. Now Honda knows they have sold a bunch more sensors than VX's..... don't you think.

Now this I got thru an intermediary so filter it accordingly.... This contact stated: "He went to the same Honda dealer that another commercial air/fuel ratio manufacturer (not car related I think) goes to to buy their sensors. That manufacturer tried to buy them in multiple hundred lot quantities from Honda. Honda replied with no deal. Buy them like anyone else, we are a car company, not a sensor company.

It is Honda's decision on what they choose to supply and at what price. I am not "inside" Honda. Honda clearly has the rights to the Honda NTK sensor.

Regards,
BigMoose

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tyler H &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">There may be some very exciting news regarding wideband O2 sensors/controllers released this weekend at the SEMA IAS show. But you didn't hear that from me..... </TD></TR></TABLE>

Guys pay attention to this. There has been "rumors" out there that NTK was going to introduce a controller and a sensor package for around $300 to $400 bucks for both. I could not verify this. This is one of the reasons that I keep "pinging" NGK/NTK to either help them bring it out .... in my small way. Or to keep from personally making a bad financial investment in this area...... as you may guess I (+ Coleague in Germany) know how to "run" both the NTK and the Bosch LSU4 sensors in hardware up and running.

Regards,
BigMoose

Xavier on this board was good enough to send me one of his old NTK L1H1 with I think around 100K on it....would have to check my notes. He said it was having problems running his car with it.

I ran it on my test bench and found it functional but slow. That means the response time was slow and sluggish (about 180% of normal). It came quite carboned up. I put it thru "my revitalization procedure" and it has been holding calibration for 2 months or so, but is still sluggish. I would not trust it to finely tune a highly blown motor on the edge...... for playing around its OK.... It sure is not reading A/F +-0.1 as a new NTK sensor with a NTK controller is spec'd to it is more around A/F +-.35 right now.

Regards,
BigMoose

Hi BigMoos great post, I will try to get my sensor as soon as I can for a decent price. Could you also comment a bit more on the controllers that you found would wourk best with the Honda VX sensor for tunning purposes. I konw you mentioned that there is quite a few of them, but I would like to know what are your recommendations. I am planning on tunning my engine on the dyno with boost and just wanted to know what would be the best choice.

Thanks, we need more people like you on this board .

Rafal

I went to the partsbin and did a search for
C5010-75044

it returned with a hit but the part number was:
C5010-74653

I tried their 888 number to see if I can get clarification on if they were the *same* part or something different. No answer....

-S

hey bigmoose,

great post! what are your thoughts about tuning a blown motor with a narrow band 02? i know an electrical engineer that has built a couple of fuel computers for blown cars based on narrow band 02's. i dont know exactly how he does it.....he wont tell me. he believes that the narrower lamba range of the narrow band sensor is good enough for tuning. the cars do run, and havent blown up yet. in the near future i plan on running a narrow band vs. wide band test on one of his blown motors to compare the two.....i just have to find another wideband sensor

big moose.

glad i got another l1h1 before the prices went up. got mine for $128 a few months ago from partsbin.

i had a question.

do you know how fast a wideband will foul up if tuning cars with leaded race gas? I hate to start wasting precious sensors on tuning. (i may have to up my very inexpensive tuning rates).

what is your "revitalization process" you use?

Hi big moose, i keep reading about these wideband sensors and how everyone all of a sudden wants one, are these only for real high powered blown applications? I have one from my HX when i wired in a reg 4 wire in it's place...I plan to go turbo in the future, but not ***** to the wall, just a bolt on edelbrock kit, more or less stock engine with minor preventative buildup. Can I use my hx o2? Is it even worth it? I have considered selling it as i was told it could go for as much as $600, (i listed mine for a more reasonable $200, but $400 does sound nice if i can),depending who you ask, I'm not trying to rip anyone off, but i could use some good cash if it's really worth that much AND will work for someone else...

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Screamer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Could you also comment a bit more on the controllers that you found would wourk best with the Honda VX sensor for tunning purposes. I konw you mentioned that there is quite a few of them, but I would like to know what are your recommendations. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Rafal,
Thanks for the question. I don't think it would be fair for me to endorse or by omission dis other manufacturers products. I don't think that is fair, and on a forum like this I could do serious damage to others.

But I will share some trend data that I have gathered over three years from the systems that I have tested. Now these are composite readings and show the maximum error measured to date.

Real A/F .... High Measurement ... Low Measurement
13 ................... 13.48 .................... 12.90
12 ................... 12.37 .................... 11.79
11 ................... 11.64 .................... 10.81

As you can see some readings are quite far from the real A/F and the error increases the futher you get from stoichiometric (14.7/1).

I thought this over today, and I am willing to make the following proposal to the board to help you guys out and to educate everyone a bit more. I am not ready, to provide my calibrations openly. Between my partner and I we have over 2000 engineering hours in 4 preproduction prototype wideband controllers at a substantial financial cost in lets say "stuff". However we are not convinced it is a financially sound investment at this time to go to production. My partner is in active negotiations with Bosch in Germany to further define our "fate". Also because of the situation that I have described on these pages above with NTK and the potential introduction of a "killer" product I am willing to share a bit more, but cannot share the core intellectual property............ I am sure you understand.

I also share Larry's (of Endyn) philosophy that the good things of life are not free. And when you learn something there is always a cost..................

Below, though not pretty, is a picture of our automated hot gas wide band test rig. It can do a hot gas calibration sweep from A/F 8/1 to 22/1 on two sensors simultaneously.



I am willing to run comparison test and publish the results on a web site of others sensors and controllers. What you guys would have to do is send me your controller and sensor pay the freight to me and back and I'll run it. We will need a member to offer up a "good" controller and sensor pair. Like a Motec, or a ETAS LA-3 or LA-4, or the NTK Blue Box. I will run all the sensor/controller pairs against this reference. This way you guys will own "your" intellectual property and can make your own judgments about "whose is best."

How's that sound? Comments, suggestions and enhancements welcome.

Regards,
BigMoose

good tuning is valuable to any car at any level. do you want to hit your target with a trebuchet or a smart bomb? i hear those trebuchet can be pretty accurate tho

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by javierb14 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what are your thoughts about tuning a blown motor with a narrow band 02? </TD></TR></TABLE>

I would rate it right up there with juggling running chain saws. I've seen it done. Takes an expert or a lucky man, and is not for the faint of heart!

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i know an electrical engineer that has built a couple of fuel computers for blown cars based on narrow band 02's. i dont know exactly how he does it.....he wont tell me. he believes that the narrower lamba range of the narrow band sensor is good enough for tuning. the cars do run, and havent blown up yet. in the near future i plan on running a narrow band vs. wide band test on one of his blown motors to compare the two.....i just have to find another wideband sensor </TD></TR></TABLE>

Now you're talking like a scientist! Great! Test test and more test. Get the numbers. First, you will never have the accuracy of a good wideband. Second the calibration is VERY dependent upon the nernst cell temperature. If he is not reading the nernst cell temperature, his calibrations would be suspect to me...... a 50 degree C change in nernst cell temperature can have up to a 10% change in nernst cell voltage.............

Be sure to share your test results. That will be good info for the board.

Regards,
BigMoose

edit to add some numbers


Modified by BigMoose at 8:47 PM 4/22/2003

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by GruvyTune &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">do you know how fast a wideband will foul up if tuning cars with leaded race gas?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Look up wards in the thread, I posted a bit of trend data from the Bosch LSU4 series on lead tolerance. Get your race fuel lead content and ratio the number I gave above it will get you close. Keep in mind the only way to know if you are partially fouling a sensor is to rerun the calibration. It wll look good, just give erroneous results untill it is really FUBARed............ the problem is the detonation demon doesn't care that the sensor drifted!

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what is your "revitalization process" you use?</TD></TR></TABLE>

I knew someone would ask. Months ago I posted how to get the carbon out of conventional 4 wire sensors......... I didn't save the thread reference, but I bet someone can find it. That is "part of the process" the 5 wire wideband require a special electrical treatment with a very specific waveform with defined voltage, current, and frequency. My partner would kill me if I gave it away...............sorry for now and hope you understand.

Regards,
BigMoose

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RSZero1 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">are these only for real high powered blown applications? </TD></TR></TABLE>

As the gent said above, tuning is critical everywhere. Now don't laugh but I've tuned my tractor/backhoe with one of my widebands! If you are boosting say 6 psi and above you better have the fueling right on the money.

About selling your used sensor. You may get some green for it. The prices you quoted are for factory sealed new sensors. If you sell your used one be fair to the buyer and be sure to tell them the mileage on them. They do age and loose accuracy and response time as I have posted upwards in this thread.

Regards,
BigMoose

OK.. now, Who wants to sell their ntk sensor? I want to buy off of you right at this second.

Big moose, thank you for a VERY informed and useful response...you have been very helpful.

Boostedb20vtec, i have to think very carefully before I sell mine, but I will give you first dibs if you're still interested.

Thank you for your reply and I do understand your concern. Unfortunately I am still a little bit confused as to what I should do since based on your posts it seems like there is a lot more to the O2 readout than just a simple display. By searching the net I have found this page, could you at least comment on how accurate such a device would be and is it worth the material it's build from .

http://www.techedge.com.au/vehicle/wbo2/5301.htm

Hi Guys, first post on this board, got sent over from http://www.performanceforums.com (free plug for favourite board)....anyway, I've been looking at the Techedge controller in the last week or so, and have been trying to find the sensor to go with it (like it seems everyone on this board). Anyway had a look at NAPAOnline and they are saying they have the right sensor in stock, Echlin Part# ECHOS791, http://www.napaonline.com/cgi-...=5806 (not sure if the link will work). Cost is $139, and will ship in 24 hours. My only problem is they don't ship overseas (I'm in Australia).

Kev

p.s. Don't you guys go and buy them all out now that I've told you about them!!

I am very familiar with the Techedge. It uses the "appropriate" principles for the NTK sensor. (There are ways to perfect subtelties...and they are improving them with each version ... but it is functionally OK.)

The key is the calibration for your particular sensor. The ONLY way to know for sure is to have your sensor/controller pair ran against a certified synthetic calibration gas; or to have your sensor/controller pair ran against a known "labroratory standard" sensor/controller that was run against a certified synthetic calibration gas.

Untill that is done no one should expect +- 0.1 A/F ratio performance. The trouble is without that calibration procedure you do not know where you are at with ANY uncalibrated sensor/controller pair. The calibrations are statistically spread around. Some right on others off.

Hope this helps some. The tech edge will absolutely define the rich from the lean region, and give you a proportional richness and leaness reading. It is also quite repeatable within the life of the sensor. It is very cost effective and you get a lot of functionality for the $. The calibration issue is not unique to Techedge, and their product is functionally sound.

The calibration issue is there with ANY sensor/controller that is not run against a known synthetic rich calibration gas standard. See previous post with ranges I have measured to date. These include various controller designs from various manufacturers.

To put you in the ball park, a tank of properly mixed and verified cal gas is $965! So no one is going to give that kind of data away free.

Regards,
BigMoose

Bigmoose, I would take you up on the calibration offer, but it sounds like it will be very expensive to have the calibration done. i don't need 0.1 accuracy for my turbo fun car anyway, so I will accept my 0.5 or worse estimation.

But, I do have the Techedge unit and a brand new NTK sensor setup that I would be willing to send you for comparision purposes. If/when you decide to begin your test program with a verifiable/repeatable calibration source, feel free to contact me if you want to baseline the Techedge model.

Also, thanks for all your input here, a nice technical dissertation is more helpful than "my Honda Ownz yoo" which is more the norm.

Thanks for being a part of the forum and sharing your valuable time and experience.

Randy

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 23Kev &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Hi Guys, first post on this board, got sent over from http://www.performanceforums.com (free plug for favourite board)....anyway, I've been looking at the Techedge controller in the last week or so, and have been trying to find the sensor to go with it (like it seems everyone on this board). Anyway had a look at NAPAOnline and they are saying they have the right sensor in stock, Echlin Part# ECHOS791, http://www.napaonline.com/cgi-...=5806 (not sure if the link will work). Cost is $139, and will ship in 24 hours. My only problem is they don't ship overseas (I'm in Australia).

Kev

p.s. Don't you guys go and buy them all out now that I've told you about them!!</TD></TR></TABLE>

Thanks for the suggestion, but NAPA is all out of them; their site is incorrect. I called them a little while ago and they don't know when they are getting them in at all....