<b>Heated 02 - at what point do you need it?</b>

1) I have heard several opinions on this. One person says "anytime you switch to headers". Is this true? I ran my 305 with 1 5/8 TES with the single wire for years in hot and cold weather and no problems.

2) What are the advantages and disadvantages to a heated 02?

3) Is the heater "on" any time the key is on?

4) How long do the heater elements last?


Thanks in advance to the answers.

 

I don't think you need to run one unless you are gonna use long tube headers.

 

Then I would say you didn't need it, even with the changes.

Quicker warm up for the O2 so you can jump into closed loop sooner, or so that's what is supposed to happen. Also, if you happen to have a lazy O2 due to its position, it might help a bit. Price may be the only downside but older heated O2's are only slightly more expensive.

Yes on the older cars but newer cars actually control the heater elements with the ecm and turn them on and off as needed.

This again goes back to the year of the car. Newer cars have self-diagnostics for a bad heater element but not the older ones. So older cars may have bad elements but you'll never know it. I have replaced several newer cars O2's because of faulty heater elements after only a couple of years. However, the fault rate is not that high and most last a lifetime.

 

Thank you.

 

Depends on how you wire it. Another user here mentioned wiring his with a relay tied into the divert valve solenoid, so that basically it was only on while the car was in open loop.

I wired mine off of the fuel pump relay, so that it would get power only while the car was running (e.i. I could sit there with the key in ON, and the heater element wouldn't be running), but I plan to add the aforementioned relay.

Why did I add a heated unit to begin with? Just to shorten the time before it goes into closed loop, and because basically, until the O² sensor heats up, my A/F gauge is useless.