Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting O2 Sensor Replacement, Bank 1, Position 1

OK, had to replace this little devil. Have an INNOVA OBDII reader and it pointed to the sensor. Read a lot of complicated information here in the forum about the removal of this sensor so offer the following...Job took less than an hour with about half of that cleaning up plug wires, coil pack and surrounding area.

1) Remove coil pack, (four bolts)
2) Remove two nuts holding the black moulded portion of the wiring harness.
3) Lift the harness off the studs and gentley pull it forward to the front of the car to give more access.
4) With a 22MM long handled wrench, (I used a Canadian Tire Professional Series) you can get to the sensor and loosen it after unplugging it from the connector.
5) Put the wiring harness back on the studs, (more room for fingers) and unscrew the sensor while swearing at FORD. I have smaller hands and could just unscrew the sensor with my fingers with a bit of pondering.
6) New Bosch sensor #13115 screws on with same amount of swearing as above. Sensor has anti-seize compound on it from Bosch.
7) Move harness back off studs and tighten sensor.
8) Connect sensor and clean up the coil pack and plug wires before putting everything back together.
9) Clear code(s)

Everything works now. Codes did not reappear.

This sensor is a marvel of a 'throw-away' car that wasnever intended to be serviced, (sort of like the alternator I suppose).

Having said that my car has 70,000 km and to date has run like an appliance with only normal fluids and filters..

Cheers, William

Welcome onboard and thanks for posting.

Posting the code(s) you received would help key this thread for future searches (format P####), although there are many on O2 sensors. Also car info in sig and location useful, although Canadian Tire tool reference kinda gives that away.

Drop by the appropriate Canada Forum for local info.

Exactly what I did. I tried to get the sensor tool to work but there is not enough room back there. I just unscrewed that wiring harness, shoved my arm between it and the head and used a good old fashioned wrench! Come to think of it, I have never used a "special" tool for any job that everyone says you're supposed to! Well, except changing the serpentine, my breaker bar wouldn't fit between the unibody and the tensioner.

Anyhow, welcome to the CEG!

Thanks, William, for posting such wonderful instructions for Oxygen Sensor replacement. We used your procedure this weekend and found it very helpful as it made it much easier for us to do the job ourselves and thus save lots of money. My CEL is now cleared!

If you don't mind, I just wanted to post some additional notes for future reference. Specifically, we felt we spent too much time looking for the right tools for the job (figuring out the sizes needed) so I thought it would be helpful to add that information in. Here it is:

- In step 1, we used a 7mm socket and 7mm wrench
- In step 2, we used a 5/16 deep well socket.
- The 22mm long handled wrench worked well for step 4.
- The same tools were used for putting everything back together in step 8.

The only other correction to your instructions is that more swearing is involved than previously thought! That sucker is hard to get to.

Once again, thanks for your help! I hope to never do this again, but if I do, I know where to turn to for help.

I was told having the fuel injectors cleaned would help make the O2 sensor last longer. Any thoughts?