My 98 ford ranger 4.0 v6 engine light is on. I had it scanned and it was determined that it is my o2 sensor on bank 1. I tried to remove it but I could not get it to turn. I have the o2 sensor wrench and I tried heating it up with a torch. does anybody have any other suggestions. i do not want to pay a service shop 165.00 for such an easy job.

Thanks, Bob

 

Soak it in gobs of PB Blaster and ditch the O2 sensor socket unless its made by Snap-On, Mac, etc. The parts store ones just flex too much and aren't deep enough to allow the socket to fit all the way over the sensor. Get a crescent or open end wrench on it and smack the end of the wrench with a hammer a few times. The shock will hopefully break the rust free. I haven't seen much that a combination of heat, shock and PB blaster can't break free.

Make sure to put on a fairly liberal amount of anti-seize on the threads afterwards so you don't have to repeat this exercise in the future.

 

Thanks for the advice. I will try it and let you know the results.

 

What was the actual code?

Odds are that you don't even need to remove that sensor AND it is indicating another problem.

O2 sensors rarely go bad. I promise.

 

I replace O2 sensors by mileage, not when they start throwing codes. It isn't so much that they go bad, but rather they get "lazy" as the sensor starts aging and is slow to switch from rich to lean, which costs fuel economy and increases emissions. As inexpensive as O2 sensors are, if I'm driving a vehicle with over 100k miles its going to be included in my next tune up.

 

The code was P0174

 

the associate at Auto zone told me it was from bank one(I am not sure what that means)

 

I wouldn't trust the guys at AutoZone to accurately interpret trouble codes. I was at the local store a couple of months ago when a guy at the counter told a customer that banks 1 and 2 on his Toyota SUV meant the O2 sensors ahead and behind the catalytic converters and told them they needed to replace ALL 4 O2 sensors at something like $100 each. Fortunately the customer was a little reluctant and didn't heed the AZ guy's "advice".

You can do a Google search with that code and come up with plenty of results. It means that bank 1 (bank of cylinders with cylinder #1) is running lean. It could possibly be a O2 sensor, but usually that will trigger a "O2 sensor not switching" or "always reading lean or rich" code. You might have a dirty or plugged injector that is running a cylinder lean. One of the easiest ways of checking is to pull the plugs. Usually whichever plug isn't dark from an over rich mixture is the culprit. The computer will run the other cylinders rich trying to compensate since most EFI systems have no way of modulating the injector pulse width of a single cylinder. With V type engines the computer can at best command the mixture of a bank of cylinders, provided that each set has its own O2 sensor.