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I have a 85 5.0 EFI. I bought just before christmas.
Over here in Australia all vehicles changed to unleaded fuel in 86. I ran the first few tanks on leaded fuel untill I found out that it was an unleaded motor!
Can running on leaded fuel affect/damage the o2 sensor creating poor fuel economy?
Generally when a sensor gets "poisoned" it will throw a code.
But if you have a lot of miles on it or you think it might be original equipment I would change it out. How poor is you economy?
Whats the spec's on your truck?
Lead isn't nearly as bad for the oxygen sensor as it is for the catalytic converters. They have platinum flakes embedded in their ceramic honeycomb substrates that causes unburned fuel to react with the air pumped into the exhaust by the smog pump. The lead coats the platinum, permanently deactivating it. It's your cats you need to replace - not the sensor.
thanks for all your feed back, SMOG Law's are pretty lax here in Queensland, the cat has been removed and a sports exhaust (single straight through muffler 4" pipe) has been installed, still has original 2 1/4 engine pipes.
Even though I am not getting codes do you think it wise to replace the O2 sensor, or save my money? I rekon it is original.
If the O2 sensor is the original, then it probably would be beneficial to replace it anyway. Chilton's reccomends replacement every 30000 mi. Replacement that often seems excessive to me but that is what they say. Mine had 130000 before I replaced mine. I figure your '85 is getting up there in miles/kilometers too.
I am just finishing a major overhaul and I replaced the O2 sensor as part of the process. I don't have any results for you yet. I hope to get the truck fired up in the next week or so.