View attachment 60442Easiest to take the h-pipe off and then you need something like this for the drivers side front sensor. Put your 12 or 18in 3/8 extension in it and your socket wrench goes on the other end. Then work it from underneath the car. Be careful with the exhaust manifold bolts for the h-pipe. If you are high mileage they can snap. And they are a bitch to drill out or extract. Spray em down with PB blaster and let it soak for a few minutes and go slowly. They can break just as easy as the damn spark plugs.
Rocky, All I can say is you must have been real lucky to get that tool to work! Working from under the car with the cross member out and going up and down as far as I possibly could I could only access that tool from two spots. You can forget the 3/8 drive! I was leaning HARD on a 24" long 1/2" drive breaker bar! hat tool may work fine on a sensor that was put in with anti seize 20K miles ago but not the factory sensors with no anti seize with 96K.
I tried heating the one side of the manifold I could access red hot and nothing. Tried the special socket from the top with a impact universal, nothing. Finally ended up cutting the wires off of the sensor and jacking the engine up until the tranny hit the floor put a deep 6 point impact socket on the sensor with an impact swivel on that and a short extension. There was too much angle to get the gun on it so I was able to get the big breaker bar on it and lean on it. Just when I figured it was going to strip it moved a hair. went back and forth a bit and soaked it some more and it finally came out. I am going to frame that bastard!!!
If the exhaust manifold nuts to the head were not so rusty I would have just pulled the manifold off of the head, it would have been much faster. I just did not want to deal with a broken steel stud in an aluminum head.
Oh, The downstream sensors did not come out either, the galled the threads so I had to buy new downstreams also. I freakin' hate emissions states!!!!
Thanks for all the suggestions and help with this one, now I get to put it all back together. Special thanks to Rocky for waking me up about dropping the rear of the engine, I have had to do that with other cars in the past but just totally went blank in it. Retirement does strange things to the brain.
The bad thing about it is I am laying under there looking at the transmission with no exhaust or crossmember and thinking.................. There is 96K on this clutch and there is NOTHING between the trans and the ground right now!! Except I am out of money and my back is screaming!