has anybody ever used a autometer wideband? i like the look of the cobalt guages. i found a a/f gauge and it comes with the wideband and all the software and all that good stuff. but is it acurate. i see there are better wideband systems but i would like my guages to match. so what would be the best bet here? they also have just the guage and i could hook up another system like the plx to the guage but i don't think displays a digital number just the pretty sweeping lights. lol

 

I have an Autometer Wideband Cobalt series. It's ok, but there are much better out there. I also got it because i wanted my gauge clusters to match. It is pretty accurate. There are two things i don't like about it. One is the the 20 sec delay on intial start up to heat the 02 sensor (this causes problems trying to data log start up and idle) and the second is that the upper boundary for AFR display always changes by .1 at ever key turn cycle. So i have to adjust it everytime I'm logging AFR so the data calculation is correct. It's not a big deal, just annoying.

 

I'm pretty sure that most widebands have the initial heat-up delay. I know my LC-1 does the same thing.

 

yeah can't you just turn the key on for it to warm up. then fire the truck up after the delay? it should be electrically heated anyway right.

 

The LC-1 goes through the heat-up cycle any time power is interrupted then reapplied. I have all of my accessories triggered off the fuel pump relay, so if I let it heat up, then start the truck, it goes through the warm up anyway. I suppose if you wired it in differently you might be able to avoid it.

 

according to hpt forum. it needs 13.5vdc to even turn on and start warm up. if you do happen to have 13.5v with just the key on when you go to start the truck it resets it to the 20 second delay again. but besides that lol i wonder how accurate it is. from what i read it has a 0-4v output. what do others have 0-5vdc? is this good or bad?

 

I know the autometer wb intiates the delay after it senses more than 14v. I haven't tried hooking up a jumper cable or charger to "trick" it into starting the count down before i crank the engine.

 

If it doesnt display a digital number, doesnt that pretty well cancel the wideband purposes for true accracy(SP). I have the plx unit and the delay, but i though mine was like a 45 second delay, although i could be wrong, and i havnt tried to avoid it yet either. I also match mine with the Z series autometers.