Some tech info copied from Hondata...
Narrow band o2 sensors work by the difference in oxygen levels between the exhaust gas and outside air creating a voltage difference across a ZrO2 Nernst cell. They don't require any power to produce an output, and the ECU can just read the voltage from the narrow band sensor.
Wideband o2 sensors add an oxygen pump cell and reference cell with heater to the Nernst cell. A controller regulates the current through the oxygen pump cell and also the heater current. The ECU cannot read a wideband sensor and there must use a wideband controller to run the o2 sensor. The wideband o2 sensor does not produce a voltage, but rather the amount of current through the oxygen cell tells us the AF ratio. The amount of current varies by o2 sensor but some are as low as +- 1mA full scale.
The difficulty is that the wideband controller must be matched to the o2 sensor. The reason is that the amount of cell current and heater current is critical for the life of the o2 sensor. Cold start current regulation is very important and it actually is possible to destroy an o2 sensor in a single cold start. This is why we do not recommend that people wire in anything at all to the o2 sensor wiring. An external AF meter will not read the wideband o2 correctly, and more than likely will consume enough current to throw off the reading drastically. Swapping o2 sensors is equally as hazardous.
To replace the RSX o2 you will need to find an exact equivalent o2 sensor, as the wideband controller electronics is integral with the ECU and cannot be replaced nor altered. The other options would be to run a cheap narrowband o2 sensor, and use the secondary o2 sensor input for closed loop (which you will be able to do for the next KManager release), or to use an external wideband controller which uses a cheaper wideband sensor and feed the analog output from it into the secondary o2 sensor input as above.
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Hondata
