I have a bad 02 sensor and I'm wondering what it causes. What happens when its bad? Something I need to fix asap?

 

I COULD cause quite a few symptoms. Just a few may be rough idle due to incorrect fuel/air mixture, pinging due to either advancement or retardation of the timing, even worse gas mileage again due to the wrong fuel/air mixture and if you're in a state with emissions testing you can fail because of the different systems that rely on the information the o2 sensor provides.

I would say you'd want to take care of this pretty quickly or it may cost you what the sensor costs in gas. Just my humble thoughts.

 

If a bad O2 sensor causes the fuel enrichment circuit to run open loop, the engine will run rich. If you continually dump unburned fuel into your catalitic converters, you will clog them up and cause a restriction in the exhaust as well as not passing an emissions test. Then you will have to replace the cats' as wells as the O2 sensor. Get R Done soon.

 

yeah certainly not one of those "dont drive it till you fix it" issues, but you really need to get it done as soon as is convenient. anything dealing with the air/fuel or emissions of the engine isnt really something to mess around with.

 

Here's a thread that recently discussed an O2 trouble code. Some info in there might help ya.

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/3rd-gen...ease-help.html