93 civic.vx hatchback new member from AZ
 

hello everyone I have a 93 Honda Civic Hatchback VX. I have been having issues so I just ordered the new o2 sensor. I'm looking forward to all your help because right now I'm only getting 28 miles per gallon. I love this little car and I liked the potential that has. so please point me in the right direction so I can do some research, thank you for having me on your forum.

Are you having any driveability issues?

Welcome to the site. Once you get it fixed up you'll be getting waaaaaaay better mileage. :)

hello
 

No driveability issues at all. Runs fine, just got the new spark plug wires, fuel filter, distributor, coil, timing belt, water pump, last year new head gasket, AC repair etc. I've fixed a lot of things on this lil thing already, so now I need to get that mileage to get that money back, lol.

Also can someone point me in the right direction as to where this dang o2 sensor is located? My chilton manual is a lil skimpy. Please help me out, its throwing CEL code 48.

O2 sensor is located on the exhaust manifold. Exactly which O2 did you order? It is important to get the correct one. There are a bunch of VX guys on here with lots of knowledge about the engine. Search too.

expensive 02
 

I bought the 5 wire 02 sensor for 49 state VX. Yeah the search on here is a lil confusing. I'm getting through it slowly but surely.

I imagine an o2 sensor could mess with these pretty badly.

explain?
 

explain why an 02 sensor would mess with it? Also can anyone point me in the right direction to install my new 02 sensor, says It's on the intake manifold, but dang I need help, thanks ecomodders!

The imput from the 02 sensor is critical to proper fuel management and mixture. It will run fine without a functioning 02 sensor, just get lousy mileage.

regards
mech

It seems the O2 sensor on these is not as critical as a lot of people think. It is critical to engine management, and if your O2 is bad enough to set off the check engine light, you will not get lean burn. But when the engine goes into lean burn it is in open loop and the air/fuel ratio is set by the computer, without the O2 sensor. There are a couple recent threads on EM where this topic came up. I was on the losing side of the debate, with the position I just described being correct instead.

I imagine the engine computer still monitors the 5-wire O2's finer wide-band data stream to protect the engine itself?

I looked at the FSM. The 1996-2000 FSM does not list the O2 or data that would come from it in the parameters for lean burn. It does say that a check engine light, for any purpose, will keep the car out of lean burn. Of course a VX is OBD1, not OBD2, but I don't think it is any different in this regard.

Normally, on this site, we have described the o2 as essential to lean burn, but apparently it is not.

Ah did not know it ran open loop for lean burn! Nor that O2 data was considered for lean burn parameters.