Okay, so my stumbling issues continue. Went to a buddy's shop and scanned it and everything points to the driver side O2 "slow switching" and "slow to heat up". I didn't jot down the code number from his scanner as we're looking at the car.

So my question is what factors are involved in heating up an O2? I know there's an internal heater, but is there anything external to the O2 that plays a part in it heating up?

From what we saw on the scan, the driver O2 is reading a very low voltage thinking the car's running rich. It tries to compensate by leaning out the A/F...too much...don't remember the number, but in magnitude it was multiples of the correction that the passenger side O2 was making. It was misfiring mostly in cylinders 5 and 7...something like over 1000 misfires each. Most of the misfiring is on the driver side, so that's why we're targeting that O2.

My next step is to swap the O2s to see if the problem follows, but before that, I was wonder if anything else is involved in heating up an O2, beside its internal heater. We checked for exhaust and vacumm leaks..didn't find anything. Checked the EGR valve..didn't see to affect the idle.

The front O2s are new, but I did recently install a new Y-pipe. Maybe I hit the O2? The front O2 is on the headers, not the Y-pipe, so not sure how it could have gotten damaged.

Any help is appreciated.

 

O2's are initially heated by the internal heater, then the exhaust gases. As you suggested, swap the O2 sensor to the other side and see if the problem follows it.