How to Know When to Change an O2 Sensor

Video Transcript

"Good afternoon, my name's Tom Brintzenhofe certified master mechanic from Reading Pennsylvania. Today we're going to talk about how to know when to change your oxygen sensor. There's a few different times in the life of your vehicle when you're going to want to change your oxygen sensor. The easiest way to tell is if you have a check engine light on and your mechanic or you come across the code for the O2 sensor, that's a good indication that you need to change it. Now, a couple of other times you need to change your oxygen sensor, it should be changed, now I'm a little bit on the excessive side, I say every thirty thousand miles because they do have a big factor in your fuel economy. If you have one or two of them that are starting to go bad or get a little contaminated and they don't trip a code right away, they could alter your fuel economy in a drastic way and even your engine performance will be affected by it. Your second thing, like I said thirty thousand miles; the other thing you might want to change, if you ever blow a head gasket and you're dumping that coolant down in to your exhaust, it contaminates those oxygen sensors real fast. Typically it won't trip a code for you but you will notice in your fuel economy afterwards. And any time you tune up your vehicle, you change your spark plugs, your fuel filter and all that stuff and air filter, it's probably a good idea to change it at that point in time too, but outside of having your check engine light on for an O2 sensor code, it's just a good rule of thumb is every thirty or forty thousand miles, you might want to change it."