OK, who here spliced their 02 sensors when they did their headers? What are the cons of doing it? I'm assuming the only disadvantage would be running the risk of a bad connection and/or excess resistance messing up the signal going to the ECU.

I spliced one of my 02s to reach my macs, and never have had a SES light. I did "only" dyno 278rwhp with my mods though, but I take that with a grain of salt since I seem to have no problem running with mildlly modded LS1s. Take the et in my sig with a grain of salt too because it was my first time down teh quartermile, and the cars only been down the strip 2 or 3 times. I'm no expert.

The car gets great milage too so I dont think anything is wrong...

Anyone here had any problems? I may just get some extensions and new 02s this summer to play it safe.

 

Did you solder the connections? If so, I'd imagine you'd have a better connection there than you would through the harness in an extension kit. Then again, I soldered mine, and still got an SES light from them, but then reoved them 2 days later to start my H/C. That was about a month ago, BTW...

 

I thought the ohm resistance would throw off the o2 readings also, I ordered the GM extensions made by Caspers Electronics from redlineperformanceengineering.com
So far so good
ToDDR

 

I use the Casper extensions too and never had a problem. Easier and less troublesome than splicing wires. Plus you cant mess anything up unless you dont know how to plug in and unplug a harness.

 

you should only splice on the PCM harness, not the O2 sensor harness. the sensor reads air samples through the wiring

 

I paid good money for O2 extensions then went and burnt the top part of the harness on the passenger side. So I ended up splicing them anyways, just twisting and taping with a bit of solder on each connection for strength. I should have saved my money and done that the first time.

-Dustin-

 

I've spliced mine on 2 diffrent cars and never had a problem. The car made 400 rwhp and ran high 11's @116 mph on a stock short block with H/C.

 

there only like 20 bucks each........better safe than sorry is my philosophy. I know someone who had some troubles when they spliced theirs...I just finished my header install and used 2 24" caspers extensions and they are working fine.

 

I spliced mine when i put my LT on, and had all kinds of trouble afterwards.... When it rained, water would somehow get on them, and my car would run like crap; I should of just bought the extensions to begin with..... just my o2 LOL

 

I'm not sure if my very bad low rpm miss after header install and splicing O2s is due to the DIY extensions or not, I am starting to think it is, because when I go WOT there is no missing at all...and at WOT the PCM ingores the O2s. I have no light though

 

Spliced mine on both my cars with no issues. Both cars run great. I used buts instead of solder because I was afraid the solder would melt off being right near the headers. Maybe just lucky.

 

Ive done it twice now and had no problems, Crimp connectors, heat shrink tubing, Some electircal tape and some wire loom.

 

bt96ss and 95_LT1_6SPD are lucky so far, but you are definitely not getting the correct reading from the O2 sensors. Over time as the connections corrode (which they will) it will throw a code. As for the extensions? I would make my own by soldering in pieces of wire and using GOOD shrink wrap. Now, I said I would make my own only because I know the correct way to solder. There is a right way and a wrong way to solder. Its not as easy as just heating it up and trowing some solder on. It won't make a good connection at all and you will get a slight resistance in a crappy solder job. When talking about O2 sensors, even the slightest resistance will throw the reading off. You average crimp connection will have .2 Ohms of resistance. On a 4 wire O2 sensor, 4 of the 8 connections will contribute to the signal of the O2 sensor. (The other 4 connections are on the heater side of the circuit and don't matter as much.) This will throw the reading off by a lot. The only advantage of the extension kits is that why are weather packed plugs, which means over time the connections should not corrode. But again, even with a clean weather packed connection, there will still be some added resistance that was not origonaly accounted for by the maufacturer. As long as you are sure you know how to solder, I would solder.

Now ends Electrical Connections 101.

 

i just compared my spliced reading with the datamaster before splicing, their identical.

 

O2 sensors use stainless steel wire, it can not be soldered. Silver solder will work but not typical tin/lead.

O2 sensors breath through the wire to get an oxgen base line level, if you solder and melt the insulation to the wire, that signal could be lost.

Butt conectors will work, at least in the short term, I have them on one side. That is what I had to do after I found out that solder doesn't work.

If you are going to extend anything, work on the wiring harness. It is standard copper wire. Leave the O2 pig tail alone.

My .O2 worth.

Z28