softley wrote:
Nate, what is your wifes car (make and model) and what exactly was the code givenup by the ECU. As Paul1433 sort of said there are no codes for "your sensor is fu-ked". codes are at best a signpost as to the cause of a fault.
It would not by chance be a VW or Ford would it?
Yep. It's not simply a matter of plug-in-and-play! You need to look at (and be able to interpret) ECU data in real time... a fault code only means that the ECU is receiving a signal (from a given sensor) that is outside its understanding eg too high / low resistance / voltage or, in this case of a Lamda sensor, typically a lack of switching from high to low volts. It doesn't tell you why.
If you can see if the sensor voltage 'switching' when you raise the revs momentarily then there's not much wrong with it.
A lack of switching however does not necessarily mean a duff sensor... it could be dirty and therefore unable to 'see' oxygen (sooted up= bigger fuelling issue... eng temp sensor reading cold...), the wiring could be physically damaged or the fuelling so lean / rich that it's outside the switching parameters... more testing required!