lambda sensors

corsa's with spi have single wire ones

cool.
Whats spi though?
single port injection?
what models have that then, i know nothing about vauxhalls.

Any others?

oh aye i've just re-read your first post properly

didn't realise you were going scrappy raiding..

i do them at work , hang fire till tomorrow and i'll pm you with a price

sorry, spi is single point injection, some multi point vauxhalls have the single wire lambda sensors also any boggo mk3 astra or corsa should have a single wire one on it IIRC the ecotec 16v ones have more wires

I bought a scrappy lambda sensor. It worked just long enough to get the car through the MoT (about an hour later, after changing it in a layby) and then was even worse to drive. Cost me ten quid, I'd have been better off bunging the tester the cash to fudge the results

I then bought a universal one, £40 although that was for a four-wire one. Works great. Can't remember where from but it was a fairly obviously named website that was one of the first ones to come up on google, and just happened to be the cheapest place.

Just out of interest, I know that they need a ground and have a connection for the signal, and also a heater. In my mind this makes minimum three wires. Given that they could ground through the exhaust, that's two wires - how do you get a single wire one? Don't they need the heater? I thought it'd mess up all the readings for the first few minutes if the sensor was too cold.

Shows if your car is running rich or lean.... on cars with oxygen (lambda) sensors (basically all cars with catalytic converters, it's part of the feedback system) you just split the signal wire into both the ECU and into a gauge, and it'll show if you're in tune or not.

You can make them fairly easily, you get an LED in the middle of a row if you're running prefectly and then the light moves left or right to show lean or rich.

On cars with cats/ECUs you can see if you're running right by flooring it or lifting off, in which case the light should flicker towards rich or lean and then the ECU should correct the mixture and it'll go back to the centre after a fraction of a second.

Yeah, one wire ones just arent heated.
No real problem for me as the car runs like curse word till warm anyway ;D

don't waste your money,the only way to get accurate quick a/f/r info is with a wideband sensor which will have four wires , non wideband lambda sensors are not qiuck at registering o2 content as they only work under steady load conditions not when accelerating so non wideband sensor will lag behind if you want to know whats happening to the a/f/r as your driving. when your emmisions are tested you will notice that it takes up to 10 seconds for the emmisions to come under the limits on a fast idle test and this is normal for older sensors. i bought an innovate lc1 wideband reader a year ago and they are just over £100 now

They are useful, but as explained above they're not really geared to tuning - you need actual figures and a faster response. But as a first sign that all is not well they're OK, as you can make them pretty cheap so it's nothing lost.

As stated you need a car with a lambda sensor in the exhaust. Then just follow these instructions to build your gauge - there was a guy on clubpolo knocking these out for G40s (where running lean == holed pistons) and fully assembled he was charging about £20, including postage and I assume a bit of profit to make it worthwhile.

www.scirocco.org/tech/misc/afgauge/af.html

Note it's american in origin, so the stock numbers are useless. Maplin might still be able to source most of the parts (although not nearly as good stock as when I worked there in 1998!), if not find someone with a rswww.com trade account