I would like to hear from any '89 Maxima owners who might have changed the oxygen sensor on your car before. Have you had any issues with the Bosch oxygen sensor setting of a check engine light on your car? For some reason, the brand new Bosch oxygen sensor keeps setting off the check engine light, whereas my old OEM sensor doesn't set it off. I've tried two different Bosch oxygen sensors, and in both instances, I was getting the same Check engine light. This leads me to wonder whether '89 Maximas have issues with Bosch oxygen sensors. If you have had the same problem as myself, what was your remedy? Was there another brand of oxygen sensor which wouldn't set off the "Check Engine" light?

The reason I'm emphasizing the '89 is because it seems that the '89 is the model year that has a two-plug oxygen sensor whereas every other year uses only a one-plug configuration.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. This car problem of intermediate stalling / check engine light for a MAF sensor or oxygen sensor is beginning to drive me insane....

-Alan

 

Are there still a total of three wires? (black red white)

Did the new sensor come with two connectors?

Maybe your MAF sensor is bad, b/c the old 02 sensor may not have been putting out a signal, so the computer will then depend on the MAF. So since you then installed a new 02 sensor, the ecu found that the MAF is not sending a good signal. When one component fails it depends on another to set the air/fuel mix.

 

There are a total of 4 wires. The old sensor (OEM) has 3 wires from the sensor itself: black, red, white. They go to one plug by themselves. Another plug has a yellow wire that seems to do nothing but act as some kind of wire mesh wrapping around the black wire. Only the '89 model year has this oddball configuration ... that's why I never like buying the first year of a redesigned model. All other years simply have three wires (black, red, white).

The Bosch sensor has 4 wires coming off of the sensor directly: black, red, white, yellow. Three wires (black, red, white) go to one plug, and the yellow goes to the other plug. Therefore, it's a direct plug-in to the existing wire harness, but this yellow wire might be doing something completely different than what the OEM yelllow wire did, which is what I am guessing is causing the ECM to keep outputting a bad oxygen sensor code.

The MAF code and the sensor code never comes together; what's happening is that I'm having intermediate stalling problems, and the MAF code comes up (but not the oxygen sensor code). I bought a remanufactured MAF which made the stalling worse, so I put the original MAF back in and hypothesized that maybe the oxygen sensor was bad, causing too much gasoline to flood the engine, causing it to stall and the computer catches it as a MAF code instead (not enough air passing through the MAF sensor in relations to the RPM of the engine). A new oxygen sensor seemed to make the stalling much less frequent, but I got this check engine light now that keeps telling me the oxygen sensor is bad.

So, in my case, it's basically picking my poison: live with no check engine light but have intermediate stalls, or live with a check engine light but have less to no stalling occurances. I was hoping to hear from some '89 owners who has this two-plug configuration and get their feedback on what type of oxygen sensor they replaced their OEM with.

I did called up the local Nissan dealership and they said they don't carry any of the '89 sensors in stock because not many people have ever requested it. It would run me about $130 through the dealership, however, versus the $78 for Bosch or a lower price for other brands (Niehoff, Borg-Wagner, Beck / Arnley) Right now, I plan on returning the Bosch and keeping my fingers crossed that one of the other three aftermarket sensor has the exact same wire configuration as my OEM one, but I'm hoping that maybe some other '89 owners or past owners may know with certainty which brand should be the right one.

 

I dont think you have to worry about the yellow wire, the way you describe it sounds like it designed to act as sheilding (From RF noise or from the ignition system). So dont worry about connecting the yellow wire to anything. The sensor should be good.

As for you rebuilt MAF, maybe try and reset the computer (disconnect the battery over night). Also check to see that the treminals on the MAF are not corroded, but clean them any way. The Terminals on the MAF are also known to go lame, so inside the connector you can squeeze down the inside so that they grab the tabs better.

 

I do believe the sensor is good too, but I don't think my Maxima (or maybe other '89 Maximas as well ...(?) ) likes the Bosch sensor because, again, the "Check Engine" light only comes on with the new Bosch sensor and not the old OEM sensor. I did check the resistivity on the sensor, and the old sensor was 6.2 ohms while the new sensor was 5.7 ohms. The Haynes manual that I bought for the car specifies that the sensor should be within 5 to 6 ohms as being acceptable, so my old sensor is slightly out of spec. Now, whether it's enough to make my car have these drivability problems, I don't know, but the car does seem to stall less frequently with a new sensor than with the old sensor.

The MAF ... yep, I've tightened up the connecting pins inside the connector, cleaned it out with some electrical contact cleaner, and have done a "hard" reset of the computer about 3 times now. But in no way did it feel as if it helped my intermediate stalling problem, so that was the reason why I was leaning away from thinking that my MAF sensor is bad. Still, I think I am leaning towards purchasing a used unit because of how on three occasions, I found that if I tapped the electrical box on the MAF sensor, my car would stall out, but in all other instances, it wouldn't stall. So, *maybe*, my MAF is semi-functional.