Is it nessesary to change the oxygen sensor on a 1995 Nissan quest?

Question

I never changed the oxygen sensor before is that bad?

Answer 1

I see this question asked on here a lot. It makes me wish I worked in a parts house. I would make a fortune selling oxygen sensors.

Actually, you asked a very good question. Years ago (25 years plus) when oxygen sensors were first used regularly on vehicles, there was a suggested replacement mileage of about 75,000 miles. A little flag would come up on some instrument clusters that said "sensor" indicating the Oxygen sensor should be replaced.

This was because the ECM used at that time had no real logic to alert a customer when the oxygen sensor had failed. It was a safe bet to replace them at a given mileage as a means to make sure it was still good at high mileage.

Today's vehicles are equipped with good logic not only to turn on a check engine light, they can also capture the data to indicate what kind of failure has occurred. There are several types of oxygen sensor failures: Lean biased, rich biased, fixed center, internal heated failure are some examples of failures that can occur.

The oxygen sensor on your Quest may never fail for the life of the vehicle. Or it could fail tomorrow. In any case there is no reason to replace it until then.

Answer 2

If you need an O2 sensor you will get a check engine light.  If there's no light there's no sense in replacing it.

Answer 3

Yes it is