How to... Save $200!

One of our cars is a 2004 Honda Civic. A few weeks back, its Check Engine light came on, giving code P1035 - Oxygen Sensor Heater Circuit faulty.

Now. My wife got a quote of $280+tax or so to fix it. I tried to find the part locally to do it myself - one place wanted $320+tax just for the part!

I did some reading, and looking at videos on YouTube, and determined that a) it should take about 10 minutes (with the right tool - an Oxygen Sensor socket - trying to do it with an open-ended spanner didn't work as I couldn't get enough leverage).

I'm in Canada. That's why everything is so expensive. Fortunately, there is the US Amazon site, and they sell the right part for my car (Denso 234-9005). Ummm... $100? And it *is* the OEM part.

NOTE: This part is for 2004 and 2005 Honda Civics! 2003 and earlier used a 'narrowband' sensor which is MUCH less expensive!

Ok, so it took a few days to come. Amazon.com now takes the import duty at checkout so you don't have to be home to sign, or pay atrocious 'collection of duty' fees.

So I put the special socket in (after WD-40 was sprayed on the old sensor a couple of times) and... bang. Out it came. EASY. Anti-seize on the threads of the new sensor, screw it in, reset the CEL code on the car and... no more CEL!

Some stuff I want to learn to do, some stuff just makes me dirty (oil changes? Hmm...). But this? $200 or so saved, plus I get the right tool for doing it next time (hopefully not for another 200,000 km on this car!).

All I can say is, that the internet really helps with stuff like this. Another thing that helps is having a Canadian credit card that doesn't charge the standard 2.5% foreign exchange fee - in this case, the Amazon.ca credit card.

So in my physical toolkit, I now have an oxygen sensor socket bit; but in my 'finding out how to do stuff' kit I have DuckDuckGo (rather than Google), YouTube, and Amazon.

I'm pretty pleased with how easy it was. Not that I want to put the mechanics of the world out of business, but I don't want to waste their time and my money either!