Leaderboard

I made some time this winter to work on the ol '78 and put her back on the road. I put her out to pasture 4 years ago with the best of intentions but y'all know how the last 4 years have gone. In the face of rapid deterioration and a narrow miss by a giant pecan tree that uprooted in a wind storm, I made the tough decision to do the best I could for her. I grabbed the grinder and the welder, some paint and the sander and figured since I might not ever get to fully restore it, I may as well do the next best thing... and drive it! Got the antique car registration and the vintage 1978 licence plate. She's back to turning heads everywhere we go! I'm not even going to contemplate the "right or wrong" of it.

Yea. It’s 100% benign for pre 2005 models. The ECU doesn’t use that data for fuel trim. It’s not indicative of anything but emissions. the biggest issue is you can’t tell when the code trips again. It’s routinely ignored in states that don’t check the check engine light for emissions or inspections for 100s of thousands of miles. Install an extender $10 on eBay and the code will go away. It’s just a spacer - remove rear O2 sensor, install spacer and reinstall O2 sensors into the spacer. It just makes the rear O2 sensor sit a little off the exhaust stream which is enough to trick 90% of them to not trip the code. repair usually includes replacing the converter. Aftermarkets sick and can cause the same issue in 1 month or 2 years. Subaru converters are $500+. So it’s not economical to repair if it’s not needed. it can often be caused also (conflating causes with an tires converter) due to an exhaust leak, fuel trim, vacuum leak, etc. but it’s nearly impossible to track down unless you’re a signals wizard. Most of the times the repair will be installing a new converter and making sure the engines working properly.