How safe to drive with a faulty front O2 sensor?

[zippyshoe]

My car has been idling poorly for the past few days. Today, it threw two CEL's - I pulled the codes, which both turned out to be P0170 (Fuel Trim Malfunction) using my pocketlogger. Did some research and found that this is often caused by a faulty front O2 sensor. I took a look at my O2 voltage with the car idling, and found that it is sitting at a constant 0.04V (instead of bouncing between 0 and 1 volt). I also noticed that my Long Term Fuel Trim is at +12%. Based on all of this, I believe that my O2 sensor is faulty. I was wondering if I could drive my car for a couple of days until I get a new O2 sensor without causing any great harm to my car (other than getting lousy gas mileage)? Thanks for any input.

 

[IslanderTsi]

You should be fine. All you have to worry about really is running a little rich

 

[billys90tsi]

All it will do is make you run rich it wont hurt anything i havnen't changed my o2 sensor in a while and im runing rich.

 

[zippyshoe]

Thanks a lot for your quick responses guys!

 

[billys90tsi]

Now if you wanna be a ricer put a spark plug in you tail pipe and hook it to a 12v switch and when there is a honduh behind u rev up really high let off and do it again and hit the switch and then they will have a burnt ricer.

 

[BlackCherryTsi]

All cars are designed to go into fail safe mode if a sensor malfunctions
the sensor stuck in the middle of its range due to its design, if it stuck somewhere else, the ecu would ignore it because it would decide (after adjusting fuel and seeing no change) that it must have failed. It will be like never going into closed loop, so your gas mileage will suffer, other than that, you will be fine
Don

 

[zippyshoe]

Now if you wanna be a ricer put a spark plug in you tail pipe and hook it to a 12v switch and when there is a honduh behind u rev up really high let off and do it again and hit the switch and then they will have a burnt ricer.

I was thinking of cooking up a few burgers using this method.

 

[billys90tsi]

OK dsm meet with you and you will bring the bbq i got the hotdogs and burgers.