Hello,
I am new to this forum and I have registered in order to help a good friend who drives a Subaru. I am located in Europe and I‘m a hobby mechanic since 20 years, mainly working on BMWs from the 80s/90s until present, and other European brands.
A good friend of mine drives a 1.5 Impreza II, MY 2007, with about 250k km and since sone time he has an increased fuel consumption and a check engine light and I diagnosed that the pre-cat Oxygen sensor needs to be replaced.
My problem is now that I am having some trouble in identifying the needed part. The installed sensor seems to have never neen replaced before. It has a 6-pin connector, with 4 wires (blue, white and 2x black) and a blue protection sleeve. I have checked many online stores for car parts which i regularly use for Euro car parts, but when identifying the car on those sites, they only find sensors with 4 pin connectors which are obviously not correct.
Also from what i read, most people recommend using DENSO sensors which I would like to do. However, checking Denso‘s catalogue (https://www.denso-am.eu/media/1462794/2020_dels_web.pdf) they dont list a 1.5 engine on the Impreza II. By comparing the engine to photos online, it seems that the car has an EL type engine (not the EJ type engine). Therefore my closest assumption would be that I need to buy a DENSO DOX-0361 sensor, which is what they list for the EL15 engine in the Impreza III.
It is really frustrating for me to try and find a part for a car brand which I am not used to work on, even though it‘s something as simple as an O2 sensor :-) Therefore I would really apreciate any help you could provide to make sure that I order the correct part:
- is there some way to make sure that the engine is actually an EL15, maybe using some sort of VIN Decoder? I tried some VIN decoders but was only able to find out that it‘s a 1.5. I have also linked a phito of the engine below.
- can you confirm that for the EL15, the adequate DENSO O2 Sensor would be the DOX-0361?
Here are some photos from the engine bay:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/190165482@N04/07MAB6
https://www.flickr.com/gp/190165482@N04/JM285R
https://www.flickr.com/gp/190165482@N04/647h24
https://www.flickr.com/gp/190165482@N04/3zWt6X
https://www.flickr.com/gp/190165482@N04/b3HzgE
Thanks a lot in advance for your help!
Cheers,
Marc