I replaced my front O2's tonight after work, what a pain in the butt!!!
Next time I'm paying to have it done, it only took me a hour, but it was a long hour.
My arthritis is hurting so bad now I cant hardly type and I was covered in oil and grease from my elbows to beyond my finger tips.
I soaked the old O2's with PB Blaster, then went back uptop, literally crawled onto the engine to remove the coil (being short I cant reach anything even standing on a stool)
Then unplugged both sensors.
Jacked up one side of the truck, cut the wires at the O2, sprayed with PB and put the boxed end of the wrench on and it came right out.
Screwed in the new one, ran the harness up.
Did the other side.
Then after lowering the truck I went back ontop of the engine and plugged them in, put the coil back.
Cleaned and put my tools away.
Took a shower and the shower walls now need to be bleached because of my greasy hand prints on them.
I dont care how much it costs but its going to be worth it.
I did not drive the truck to work today so that I would be nice and cold to work on.

 

Wimp!

When we did my wife's '97 last year I said screw it and removed the engine mounts and lowered the engine down to rest on the brackets with no isolators. Made it a lot easier.

Of course, that can lead to other issues, like if you have rusted engine isolator studs and the rubber twists in two. Didn't happen to us, but it has before.

 

Thanks Tom!!

 

Sound like a PITA!

How many miles on the clock, or what symptoms should I expect when I need to replace my O2 sensors?

You also described what I looked and felt like after replacing the driver-side radius arm. I read the RAVE workshop manual today and it clearly states the need for a helper when removing/replacing the arm. Duh! (after breaking my back doing it myself)

 

haha, i replaced my Bank 1 upstream today. It really was a pain. i had to modify my wiring harness for it and combine the old sensor harness with the new to make it longer. My bung for the sensor is in a lower spot after i cut the cats out and welded in the new bung.
I want to know what Rover was thinking when they put the connector between the engine and firewall, jerks! When i got done, i was brown up to my elbows and bleeding pretty good from all the sharp bits behind the engine.
As i was sitting on the curb, hot, sweaty, covered in oil and blood and smoking a cig with a beat look on my face, one of my neighbors walks out of the apartment to go to her car. She sees me sitting there in my condition and she lets out some little yelp. But i assured her i was only working on my car and that it was fixed now.

To sum it all up, im with spike, ill pay someone next time

 

Pay me! All my truck has is 02 sensor problems, i feel like i've changed em so many times i could probably do it next time with telepathy and not actually touch em. o2 sensors and starters i can officially do in my sleep. Its NOT something im proud of. They're tricky though. And if i weren't so fed up everytime i got them off thier clips, the smart me would splice the harnesses and move them further up the firewall away from the bell housing. But everytime i get to that stage i just want to be DONE with em.

Perseverance my dear friend!

 

May the fleas of 1000 camels infest the armpits of the "engineer" who placed those front o2 connectors on top of the bell housing,( It's probably the same guy who put the ignition coil between the intake manifold and firewall on a D2).
The next time I replace the front o2's I will take my chances with splicing the wires where I can get at them.

 

I am sorry to hear of your troubles Phil and everyone. I just replaced mine a couple weeks ago on the 95 and they came out with ease. no special tools and in fact I just sprayed a little bit of PB around the sensor threads about 30 min before the removal. I seriously used an open end spanner and they just twisted right out. Living in Fla and no salty roads helps too.

And the connectors were super easy to access since there are no coil packs in my way.

Total job time at most... no joke... 10 minutes. Part of that time was wheeling the crawler over to my beer on the front bumper and talking to a neighbor.

 

.....seething.....

 

When I had to replace my Y-pipe I noticed that one of my O2's had damage. The entire casing had broken off inside the tube. I simply just cut the wires to the old O2 and reconnected my spare O2 with heat shrink. Works fine & no codes.