Hello, I don't know much about 02's and basically wondering if my bad 02 on driver side is going to mess up my car if I still drive it until I get the new 02. People told me it may mess up the cats or whatever. I did a header install and the driver side 02 went out. I drove it once after I scanned it. I was told not to drive the rider by the dealership & a local speed shop told me it would be alright if I kept driving for another week till I got the sensor. I was worried about fouling plugs & messing up the cats? Would this be harmed? Lemee know if I could drive around still...again I dont know great detail in this area so all the help would be appreciated..

Thanks!

(edit) p.s...checked 02 and its plugged all the way in..original 02 with over 104K so it may be bad...already troubleshooted. So no need for troubleshoot help.. just wondering about the harm of bad 02 to other areas..while driving...Thanks..

 

FormulaDave, I no longer have O2s and run constantly in open loop. The trick is to have good lookup tables specific to your car in the PCM as the PCM loses the ability to adapt.

Oh the reason I have this? Living in a third world country means it is as easy (sometimes easier) to get leaded petrol as unleaded. Leaded petrol eats O2 sensors ,clogs cats and is hard on spark plugs but it does allow me to tell the state of tune by the colour of my exhausts.

Pepper, the only thing I can think of is that if you are stuck in open loop with generic lookup tables it may run rich. If this is the case doing it for too long will foul plugs, which could be cured by a few WOT runs once the O2s have been fixed. Not sure about the effect on cats. HTH

Dutchie
'96 Z28

 

I run OL all the time, and have for a while. I was getting odd readings from my O2s while in CL and kept working on trying to fix it, for whatever reason i could never get it right. Went to OL and picked up 2MPG and the car runs as good as ever. I play with the OL tables in editor. The best is to have some WBO2 time and really work on the tables to get them where you want them. Each person is different, they might want more or less fuel in certain places...so, those tables can be reworked the way you want. I do not expect to return to CL operation in this car.

 

i ran with the edelbrock ceramic shorties and my sensors fit right in. no SES and still on the original O2's. sounds like there might be some issue with the BBK sensor location. just throwing it out there.

 

There is no issues with BBKs, I used to run them and no problems. I went to OL when i switched to LTs b/c the O2 readings were bad for some reason.