Hey folks, Glad to see this gracious site is still helping out each other. As this has always done for me. Anyway, in a song I can tell ya whats brought me back to this ol reliable place of inquiring,,,, I was driving down the road,, as easy as could be... then to my surprise, from the corner of my weary eye, I spyed...the dreaded engine light.... But it wasnt the complete blues for me, cause I like defeating the orange light on my machine. Anyway, thats my song and you should hear it with a guitar... It rocks I know what I should do, Spend! That is, on a p0161 code. But!!!! as I found with this place, offering solutions is graciously given, before one domino effects the wallet. it's a 1997 4.2 and last week it gave me a evap code, that I cleared, and hasn't come back. But this 161 codes got me thinking.... its something else, before I think too much.. any ideas? and where is bank 2 located? I foget these things I';m getting old. Thanks

 

Have you looked up the fault code yet to see what it means? That needs to be your first step.

Plug into into the SEARCH tool and see previous discussions.

What's to "dread"? That one isn't particularly problematic.

 

I want to say(I believe it is the driver side downstream o2 sensor but Im not 100% sure) if you google that code under ford, you should come up with the answer. I had some exhaust work done a month ago and got a code for a pre-cat O2 sensor but the code was different.

 

Here is the basis for the code.
The PCM has detected a fault in the heater circuit of that bank's ox sensor.
Look for an ground-out or shunt , burnt harness etc.
The code won't affect drivability very much.
It would affect a cold start by not heating the sensor up to operating temp. in the alotted time before the system goes closed loop. You would still not likely see any obvious effect in realtime because it is a 'short' time operating item affecting emmissions.
The only other result is it may make that bank lazy on fuel injection response time and possibly reduce fuel mileage a small amount.
Deeper testing would be the use of a scanner to watch the action of the circuit and see the same effects discribed above.
Good luck, not a difficult fault to get a handle on.

 

Just replace the bad sensor...My precat sensor went out after getting some exhaust work done and because it got damaged. My mileage Plummited until I replaced it