Ivan
Veteran
Location: Hutchinson Kansas
| The term "oxygen sensor safe" came about because of the EPA.
Long ago the EPA decided that car manufacturers should figure out a way to reduce the meeisions of vehicles, since hardly anyone ever took their car in to get it properly tuned up every six months. The first thing in line was a catalytic converter. Basically this device "Stores" oxygen to burn excess fuel not burned by the engine. So in order to keep the mixture in control and keep from flooding the converter and making things worse than if there wasn't a converter at all, they implimented a feedback fuel system. This required a way to tell the computer how much O2 is in the exhaust, and the computer can adjust fuel mixture.
Little did they know that acetic acid (vinegar) would have a detrimental effect on the O2S (oxygen sensor). Have you ever opened a tube of silicone and smelled a strong vinegar odor? That is the unsafe kind. Thus to keep you from replacing your (now up to eight!) oxygen sensors at 100$ a pop, they made sensor safe silicone. This type of silicone cures from the humidity in the air, where as the old stuff didn't like too much humidity. That is how the Fel-Pro tech explained it to me, and he soundec inportant 
Any that is a long explaination for this:
Don't use the silicone that smells like vinegar.
I came, I saw, I hovered |
