[s-cars] O2 sensor removal

[Steve Marinello]

Teddy,

The whole story...I had replaced the original cats with the 'performance'
Magnaflow units.  The car hasn't run right since...maybe the backpressure
issue?  Runs rich, especially early...mileage crashed.  Shortly after the
cats, I replaced the resonators/mufflers on the stock exhaust with Magnaflow
units.  Drone city, but kept tolerating it, until it got so bad that a 30
minute drive gave me a vibration buzz.  At that time, there started to be
some weird changes in sound under acceleration, and having heard that these
cats sometimes fail in two years, I started to worry...as it was about two
years.  Finally ordered Paul's dual exhaust out of Luxembourg. I know his
quality, as I have a unit on the urq.  Decided to go with metal matrix cats
on the redo last week.  When they were pulled, one of the cats showed some
meltdown, but the other really didn't look all that bad.  The guy at the
shop, after hearing my description and driving it, expected that the cats
would be completely empty.  He said that with the Magnaflow straight through
mufflers, the cat ceramic pellet waste just blows out the exhaust pipes,
having been hit by a couple of red hot pieces one time when he stood behind
a car getting revved up in the shop.  He was surprised they didn't look
worse.  Anyway, spun SS metal matrix cats are on there now.  Still some
droning between 2400 and 3000 rpm; Paul said that the exhaust's almost too
quiet with the stock cats. So, I'm assuming the O2 sensor also got burned
out in the process and am replacing it.

Of course, things can't ever go right.  Just used an extension after hearing
from Cody that it was probably easy if less than ten years in place, and the
sensor came free easily, but when I went to unplug the old sensor, the
plastic connector that takes the spade connector from the sensor just
crumbled in my fingers.  SH*T!!  Anyone know a good way to deal with that?
I'll tape it for now, but I'll have to find something else.  Maybe it will
clean up enough so that I can just put the connection in one of those little
connection bubbles, although I don't know how that would handle the heat
back there. Not a whole lot to deal with in terms of length...

Ideas welcome. Got to go somewhere in a couple of hours...

Thanks again,

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: tedebearp at yahoo.com [mailto:tedebearp at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2012 11:29 AM
To: Steve Marinello
Cc: <s-car-list at audifans.com>
Subject: Re: [s-cars] O2 sensor removal

Tell me about the cats.  My car failed smog at idle with high HC.  IR
pyrometer shows that the outlet temperatures are quite a bit cooler than the
inlet temperatures, implying that the cats are nonfunctional.

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 2, 2012, at 9:01 AM, "Steve Marinello" <smarinello at entouch.net>
wrote:

> Having put Paul Fernandes' gorgeous new exhaust on the avant and 
> replaced the cats, for the second time; this time with Magnaflow spun 
> SS metal matrix units, I'm replacing the O2 sensor, again,  today.  
> What was the consensus best way to remove it? .cold or warm it up and 
> let it sit a bit? Nut cracker soaking right now, with an occasional 
> tap.  Just wondered during my down time.  Seems to me that last time I
warmed it up a bit.
> 
> 
> 
> TIA,
> 
> 
> 
> Steve
> 
> _______________________________________________
> S-CAR-List mailing list
> http://audifans.com/mailman/listinfo/s-car-list
> http://www.audifans.com/kb/List_information