perlfather

My car with 79k miles has/had original oxygen sensor. Driving on highway in light rain, check engine light comes on briefly and then goes out. After a couple of miles it suddenly looses power and engine starts to die. Pulled over, all the lights come on. I am thinking DME relay perhaps and change it. Engine starts right up. After a few miles the same symptom, car looses power, dies and all the lights come on. After stopping, the car re-starts and this dying, restarting repeats a few more times with the check engine light on and off. Keeping the revs high seems to help.
The problem (after some thought) turns out to be a defective oxygen sensor. Replaced it with a Bosch unit (Pelican) using lots of heat to extract old sensor and car is happy again.
Moral of the story - if you have a 20+ year old sensor time to replace it when you have time rather than get stuck, however it will not leave you stranded.
If the DME relay is defective the car would not restart right away. Every time you re-start the car the oxygen sensor system resets itself thus it will restart even if it is defective. Good to know.

I am now wondering about the metal "sleeve" that should have been surrounding the oxygen sensor (shown in the diagrams of the exhaust system). It was missing.
Is it there to protect the sensor from debris or does it function as some type of heat shield? Any ideas? Where can I get a replacement?

Vandit

Interesting. My car started to do that intermittent hesitation and it progressively got worse to the point it wasn't driveable. I've replaced caps, rotors, coils, and head temp sensor and no relief.

I'm currently refurbing the whole intake area hoping to find something wrong. I planned to do wires too. I guess I should throw in an O2 sensor while I'm in there.

Twood

Maybe check the coils. Sounds similar to mine and it was coils