The O2 sensor may be covered under the emissions warranty if its failure
causes the vehicle to fail an emissions test.

Oxygen sensors in your car are covered for 2 years or 24K miles (49 state).
In California it's 3 years or 50K miles. Looks like this one will be on
your dime.

If the light doesn't come back on with the same code, it was truly fixed.

Really.

$200 converts to just under two hours labor at the usual dealer shop rate.

Have you asked (nicely, because you're trying to get a question answered,
not lynch somebody) what exactly took them two hours and why two hours were
charged?

For future reference, the OBD II computer is designed pretty well. If it
says it hurts somewhere, you can be pretty sure that is a good place to
apply first aid cream. Some systems will throw out a code that means,
MALFUNCTION, then another code in the same family that says TOO <much or
little> of something, and perhaps another code in the same family that
dialsl in even tighter. There are not three things wrong in this instance,
there is one thing wrong that manifested itself three times.

The MIL seldom malfunctions, and it has its own code if it does. From what I
remember, you had one code -- P0141. This has a definition, and there is
really nothing other than the heating element within the O2 Sensor that can
trigger that code.

If you had a code that said TOO RICH or TOO LEAN, these can both come from a
faulty O2 Sensor, but they can also come from other problems, and this is
where the system gets tricky. But, as I said earlier, a sensor might throw
multiple codes, and there is really only onne problem. The challenge is to
decipher the codes that are generated, and figure out which one can cause
the others in a ripple effect. If there was a real problem with the mixture,
then there would be a code that suggested a problem with an injector, for
example. Personally, I give weight to the hostile environment that a part
might live in -- an O2 Sensor lives in a much more hostile environment than
a fuel injector, the exhaust is far hotter than the intake or fuel rail
because the O2 sensor lives on the side of the exhaust system where heat
flows by unabated, and the injectors live in the head, with coolant pulling
heat away -- so when the computer tells me the O2 Sensor is not doing
something, my first instinct is the hostile environment has finally caught
up to the life expectancy of the sensor.

I also tend to give the wiring a clean bill of health for a few more years.
The first OBD II cars and trucks are just over ten years old, and assuming
reasonable care the wires should be good for another 5 year sor so. I have
an '81 Jeep, and the wires are still pretty good on that, surely the wires
on a '96 Anything should be okay (until there is proof there is a problem).
Obviously, while working on stuff, you will look at the wires to be sure
they are not broken or shorted, but I do not spend much time chasing wires
on my initial attempt to fix stuff. The problem with most wires is at the
connector where the sensor is plugged in.

In any case, my gut instinct is that you got raped. Sorry ...

"Steve" ...

So it is a hundred bucks to plug in the code reader and another hundred for
simply replacing and then plugging in the code reader again.
This is why I try to do as much as I can on my own and ask a lot of
questions here when I need to before I do it.
Tomes