Searched the stickies, looked at the motorvate write up & went back 5 pages on this forum. (Apologies if I missed it, please post link if so.)

(Normally I'm over in the I30 section.)

('97 I30t, 156K miles.)

I've been slowly doing some maintenance on mine after having a knock sensor go bad and cleaning out the MAF. Now I'm replacing things that might not "need" to be done but will provide assurance of at least 70K more miles.

Anyway, I got a set of replacement O2 sensors & replaced the downstream one. It went great.

However, it appears that to get to the upstream units, I need to remove major exhaust pieces like the y-pipe that sits vertically and leads to the cat.

It appears that the motorvate write up was done while the exhaust plumbing was being upgraded anyway....so that's how he went about it.

Do I also need to remove that plumbing, or is there another way to get to it? The motorvate write up I saw was not specific. Thanks in advance...

 

No exhaust pipe removal is necessary, but I will admit that it is very tight in there.

Go to the parts store and get a crows foot style O2 sensor wrench. It has a 3/8" square drive hole; I used a breaker bar with mine. I found the special wrench at AutoZone for $10. Makes easy and quick work of the buried sensors on the Max.

 

Thanks!!! I have the socket but I guess the profile is too tall to get in there... It sounds like a crow's foot, low profile one would be better..

Since I had been crawling around underneath getting to get to the downstream sensor, I've gotten my back too fuxored to wrestle around with the other ones... It's now worth it to spend $80 for the shop to do it & I'll take my meds! ...guess I'm just gettin gold.