Diving Into Wideband Oxygen Sensors With Daytona Sensors

For the better part of a century, a long list of technology has landed in the hands of everyday people whose origins began elsewhere. For example, NASA needed battery-powered cordless tools to work on satellites or the space station. Now, we use that same technology to help disassemble and reassemble the project in our garage faster than ever. Disc brakes have been a common sight in production cars since the 1970s, but they owe their roots to motor racing from the 1950s. Carbon fiber started in aviation and space programs before making its way into motorsport; now it helps keep the weight down on modern-day performance cars that suffer from excess bloat.

By the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the oxygen sensor had become commonplace in vehicles on dealer lots. It was developed when electronic fuel injection started hitting production cars in the late ‘70s, and its original function was to keep your vehicle’s air-fuel ratio (AFR) constant and steady for the emissions coming out of the tailpipe. But, as the years went on, engineers were able to use this technology to fine-tune engines in daily drivers, as well as your performance car, to extract more power out of engines, keeping both the EPA and our right foot happy. Now, whether you have a carburetor or electronic fuel injection; a small engine or large displacement V8; naturally aspirated or boosted, you can utilize that same technology to pinpoint your AFR with Daytona Sensors WEGO wideband kits.

Daytona Sensors started in 2001 in Debary, Florida, designing, manufacturing, and supplying digital ignitions for the motorcycle market. I have run their products on my old Harley Davidson V-Twins. In 2003, they quickly expanded into the automotive aftermarket with a range of products to control the fuel and spark of your engine.

What is an O2 sensor?

An oxygen (O2) sensor is an electronic sensor mounted in an engine’s exhaust system that tells the EFI control module, called an ECU or PCM, how much oxygen is in the exhaust. This communicates the AFR, using a range of voltage so the computer can make fueling adjustments if the mixture  is too lean or too rich. It is active the entire time the engine is running, and modern sensors can communicate this data up to one hundred times per second. An oxygen sensor can do this by allowing exhaust gasses to come into the tip of the sensor inside the exhaust…