Quote:
Originally Posted by bawareca
What makes you think that the O2 sensors are wear and tear items? If you go that route you have to replace all sensors in the engine and if you go with anything than original you are probably in big trouble. As a matter of fact when the O2 sensor fails the computer will tell you that.
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They definitely are wear and tear items. The fronts are really torn by the high heat.of exhaust. Wish they lasted forever but they do not. They are not cheap either. You are right one can wait for them to go out of spec to the point you get check engine codes but this isn't good for fuel economy or catylictic converter life.
cars trim adjust the air to fuel mixture by the information from the o2 sensors. As the 02 sensors wear can give increasingly bad info and then the "fuel trim" goes increasingly bad. Rough running and poor economy would result. Also threatens life of catylictic converters. Fyi google "odb2 fuel trim".
Fyi I took a mechanics emissions class at golden west college like 6 years ago and got an A. One can determine a lot with the emissions numbers via odb2 and engine exhaust gases.