today I while driving on the freeway I got a check engine light, when I got home I scanned for codes and I got
P0139
p0159
p1147
p1167
all o2 sensor related. obviously its not good but how damaging can it be to keep driving? I don't do much high speed driving, just to work/school and back home (about 7 miles a day). also, any suggestions on fixing it? what do I tackle first? thanks!

 

All those codes pertain to your rear O2 sensors. Your car has 4 total - two on each bank with one in the front to control A/F ratio, and one in the rear to monitor emissions. In your case the codes are for the emissions related O2 sensors, which means the only negative impact to you is passing inspection.

Normally id say just replace the sensors and call it a day, but since both banks are giving you codes at the same time, that raises an eyebrow and suggests to me that the sensors might just be a symptom of something else. First of though, what can you tell us about the car? How long have you owned it? Did the previous owner do anything to the car? My guess is that those sensors got swapped out and replaced with whatever the cheapest chinese garbage was off of amazon.

 

Ive had the car for about 8 months, the only think the previous owner did was get the alternator replaced. the car has just over 150k miles and this is the first time i have had a check engine light come on. I cleared and rescanned and nothing has popped up since.

 

usually with rear O2 sensor codes they take a while to come back sometimes. I Noticed ,when I first got my cat gutted and and had no 2 sensor, that I would get an engine light for it sooner when using the cruise control.

may have bad cats...

 

May have something to do with it, but worth noting either way - the precats on these cars are notorious for blowing motors. The substrate rattles loose and bounces around like popcorn inside the cat and eventually bounces right back up into the valves, where it then mares the **** out of everything. Its what causes many of these motors to burn oil. Solution is to remove the precats and bore them out, you can always put spacers on your emissions O2 sensors to fool them into thinking the cats are still intact.