The computer needs to read what the oxygen sensor sees so that it knows how much fuel to add to the air going into the engine. If it can't tell, it will add more......just to %26quot;make sure%26quot;.
So what happens if the oxygen sensor doesnt get changed?
engine light will turn on thats about it mines been out for a yaer
So what happens if the oxygen sensor doesnt get changed?
Your car runs like crap. The oxygen sensors are the whole basis of what controls your air/fuel ratio, which is what keeps the car running properly. If there were no oxygen sensors there wouldn't be modern fuel injection, we'd still be using carburators. It's the #1 single most important sensor. As they wear, they begin to switch from lean/rich slowly, and your car will do the same, and it's performance will become very sluggish. Eventually it'll get so bad that it stalls, fails emissions, cats get clogged, and overall the car just runs like junk.
Ok your car will run rich which will use more gas. The catlytic converter might get clogged because of too many carbon gases. It will have poor performance, fuel might come out the exhaust pipe or clogg your cat. converter. It will also stall because of the wrong air fuel ratio. But if that fails you still have mass airflow sensor which will be controlling the amount of fuel going in, but then your cat might get clogged because of gases and fuel. The O2 sensor generates a voltage and the computer reads it and adjusts the air fuel ratio using input from O2 sensor and mass air flow sensor if O2 sensor fails yo will have bad emissions.
Check engine light would turn on. Rest is depends on which O2 sensor. Typical OBD 2 cars have two O2 sensors. One in the front of the catalytic converter measures the engine combustion quality. The other one, after the catalytic converter would measure the air after the cat filtering- purpose of it is to detect the catalytic converter problem. O2 after cat can be ignored until the check engine light goes on (and replace it when it does) However, the one before the cat, when not changed in time, can damage the CAT. And if this O2 sensor give you the check engine light, it does NOT necessarily means the O2 sensor is bad. It means that engine combustion quality is bad, and O2 sensor is detecting the unburned fuel going out of exhaust.
Generally, you would want to change O2 sensors in every 60K for older cars, and 100K for new.
your check engine light will stay on, thats about it
--good luck
