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Actually a little consideration went into choosing the water over the wideband. If you were going turbo, I would definitely choose wideband. Period. But our engines are actually very forgiving NA. I basically never found knock in tuning it while she was NA. Until I went with bigger injectors, crower 3 cams, and AMM intake I ran her in the 14's to 15's (AFR), no knock. I even ran her one time at the track at 16 to 1, just cause I got pissed at her. No signs of knock on the plugs or the pistons.
Now this of course depends on your tune. I also used a wideband/dyno with MSnS to set her up.
The gauges are there to tell you what's working right or wrong. The oil is self explanatory. I like the water temp because as you go up in comp you can also go up in heat. The stock gauge is pretty much useless. At mid range mine would waver 30 degrees (the stocker wouldn't move while my gauge would have a 30 degree difference). By monitoring the water temp you can get a better idea of what's going on in your overall engine and you can actually watch the fans coming on and the thermostat opening etc. It just seems to monitor more.
Now you can get away with running lean on an NA. It may sputter or spit or even throw a code. At that point (remember you said built engine so that means forged pistons), if that happens you can then put on your wideband and check it out. The pistons can handle it. If you wait for that idiot stock water gauge to come up, it can already be too late (not to mention the comparisons from day to day driving that you can see with the temp gauge).
Obviously, the ideal would be at least three gauges (oil, water, wideband) but you only give me choice of two with NA so that's why I chose those two.
MB
Captain Caveman
96 RS Turbo 11.414 @ 119.62 MSNS, Crower 2 NA cams, BW366, 10.5 comp, UDP, 60mm TB, W/A intercooler, 3.55 tranny 567.9whp 430tq 97 RS NA 13.188 @ 103.87 MSnS powered 12.5 comp, Crower 3's and 219.4whp with 175tq 98 RS DD 12.5 comp on stock ECU, LTH, Crower 2's, Koni, GC, Hypercoil, DG hats 99 OZ 5sp Stocker 15.856 @ 85.97 99 GS stocker auto 17.7@77mph!
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