AAA-approved repair shop said the replacement part would be $259 (plus labor). I don't know if my particular car has more than one O2 sensor (Chilton manual seems to indicate only one), and I'm seeing prices on the web much lower than this (50, 100 dollars), though my newsgroup and web googling shows cases of O2 sensors costing about as much. Am I missing something? It seems overly expensive. I can't call them until tomorrow. It's a 1995 Legacy L.
Thanks, Rebecca
95 Legacy (like mine) has two, one before the cat and one after - and yes you should be able to get them for less than 100$US. The upstream one is more important - if this dies the ECU will run the car in "limp" mode, excessively rich - I think the downstream one is just to detect whether the cat is working or not.
-- Dominic Richens | snipped-for-privacy@alumni.uottawa.ca "If you're not *outraged*, you're not paying attention!"
Thanks for the affirmation. I called two Subaru dealers this morning, figuring their price on parts would be on the high side in general for OEM parts. I was quoted 126 or 142 per sensor. I called my garage and asked what was up - turns out the aftermarket parts they usually buy aren't always cheaper, so they'll be buying the sensor from somewhere else.
By "limp" mode - would this explain why the car seems to hesitate a bit upon acceleration at times? It seems to give a little bit of a lurch. The code that came up was for slow response, not total malfunction.
Rebecca
"Normal" operations involve the computer (ECU) receiving readings from various sensors around engine, including the oxygen sensors. The ECU adjusts engine operations based on those readings, in normal operation. If the ECU determines one or more sensors are giving readings outside normal limits, it's programmed to go into "limp home" mode, where it runs by a pre-programmed set of values that are very protective & conservative. This is based on the assumption that if the sensor readings fail the sanity check, don't use em.
The "slow response" is typical for either sensor or cat failure.
When the ECU runs in limp home mode, engine performance will be pretty limp, too 8^)
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