Or are you simply curious as to what happens if you remove the O2 sensor from a car. Can removing O2 sensors increase horsepower? To keep it brief — removing O2 sensors could cause your car to have any of these symptoms: bad fuel economy, reduced performance and failed emission test.
If you have installed performance parts like exhaust headers and nitrous in your car, your O2 sensor could hinder the performance gain by reducing the amount of fuel injected for combustion. This happens because your O2 sensor detects excessive pollution and is trying to reduce the pollution at a cost of performance. This is why performance enthusiasts sometimes remove O2 sensors from their cars. Was that too complicated? To deliver power, your car engine needs to ignite fuel and create combustion.
This combustion absorbs oxygen. To have more power, it requires a bigger combustion which in turn requires more Oxygen. Combustion generates toxic exhaust gases that will exit the car through the exhaust system. These exhaust gases contain toxic molecules like Carbon Monoxide, Hydrocarbon and Oxygen leftover from the combustion. The amount of oxygen and fuel in the combustion chamber must be optimal. Too little fuel means that combustion is limited and the performance of your car is also limited.
Whereas too much fuel means that not all of it can burn — resulting in unburned fuel to exit into the exhaust system causing wastage and extra pollution. This is where the O2 oxygen sensor comes in. An O2 sensor is responsible to measure the amount of Oxygen left in an exhaust gas. The ECU also uses other factors to identify how much fuel to be injected — but O2 sensor plays the major role. There should be at least one oxygen sensor in a car — located in the exhaust system, right before the catalytic converter.
Typically, there is more than one oxygen sensor in a car — especially those with a bigger engine. These additional sensors are mounted on the exhaust manifold. One oxygen sensor per cylinder. An O2 sensor is mounted onto an exhaust pipe — half of the body inside the exhaust, and the other half outside.
The O2 sensor reads oxygen levels on both inside the exhaust and outside. The difference in O2 will create a voltage spike — indicating how low or high the O2 level is inside the exhaust. The higher the voltage spike, the bigger the difference in O2 levels. Below are the typical readings from an O2 sensor. Click here to see important news regarding the aCar App.
Drive with or without an unattached oxygen sensor? Is my car safe to drive? My husband cut an oxygen sensor and stripped the threads trying to get it out, only to realize it wasn't bad car's at 67, not , miles and just passed a safety inspection So he pushed it back in place without reconnecting or rethreading it.
Is the car safe to drive this way? Can the sensor be reattached? Should I take it out to drive to a mechanic? If it falls out will it hurt the engine? There are two oxygen sensors should we replace both now, even though they should have been good for 33, more miles? I'd say if it falls out, you'd have a noisy exhaust at the very least, and you could have dangerous carbon monoxide leaking into the the interior of the vehicle.
Also, when it falls out, iit will no longer read properly so your Check Engine light wil come on, and your car will switch to a set of default parameters to run on, which will mean you'll probably get less mileage. The best course of action is to replace the O2 sensors. I did this once stripped the threads - thankfully the threads came off the O2 sensor so I just had to use the correct sized tap to get them out of the exhaust manifold. After tapping, the threads were back to normal.
It won't hurt the engine, but you may melt some nearby wires if they are close to the escaping exhaust gasses. You could also possibly start a fire if that area of your manifold is soaked with leaked oil. You need to get it fixed- but I drove mine for a day at low speeds with a chunk of wadded up aluminum foil stuffed in the hole with a wire around the manifold to keep this plug from being blown out.
Thank you for your replies! My husband put a screw in the old one, but since the 4 wires are cut, the service engine light is back on. Learn more. Do engines absolutely need an O2 sensor to function properly? Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 9 months ago. Active 10 months ago. Viewed 49k times. Improve this question. O2 sensors right before catalytic converter help run engine as close to stoichiometric ratio as possible, but there may be O2 sensors after cat, which are mainly to monitor cat health.
O2 sensors were introduced mainly for emissions regulation, trying to keep them as low as possible. So the answer is no, they are not absolutely needed for engines to function properly if they would designed to run without one.
My snowblower doesn't have one Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer.
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