by sergei » Wed Aug 15, 2007 11:29 pm
if you have free time 12mm spanner/socket with ratchet, jack, some safety equipment (jack stands, stumps bricks, concrete blocks), and butane torch, you can try and clean your oxygen sensor.
Remove sensor (pretty straight forward). But it in some kind of vice (vice the flange of the sensor not the body of it). Heat the sensing area with the butane torch until it is bright red hot and keep it like that for 2-5min. let it cool down, all the crap on it should flake off by that time.
Put it back in, reset ECU and measure OX1 voltage. Should fluctuate between ~1V (+/- 200mV) and 0V about 8 times in 10 seconds or more. Fluctuations are the result of the ECU constantly adjusting mixture. It does in error and trial way as these sensor have quiet steep hysteresis.
If the voltage is not fluctuating and is stuck at 1V it means that something causing ECU into overfueling. ECU can only compensate maximum 20% of the fuel correction from factory map. If it is stuck at 1V it will clog again after a while. If ECU is out of that 20% range it will run in open loop (like it does under full throttle, or low coolant temp).
The cause of that could be something simple like stuck thermostat, or faulty water temp sensor (unlikely, but possible), or wrong timing (too much advance - causing detonation - which causes ECU to overfuel and retard ignition), cam timing - either cam/crank shaft jumped a tooth or somebody did not install it right in first place (with one tooth out on exhaust cam, it will still run fine, but will be slightly under powered and cause all sorts of issues, because the camshaft and ignition timing runs off that shaft). Even wrongly set Throttle sensor can cause ECU going into open loop.