87GN-I bought the car and it had a heated O2 sensor. I bought a stock GM O2 sensor and was going to install it but the connections are different. The heated one has more than one wire. How do I hook up the stock sensor? Do I just cut the wires from the heated O2 and connect one to the stock and then tape up the rest? Thanks for any information.
yes....connect the odd colored wire from the harness to the single wire coming from the sensor.
The other two wires should be the same color...one will be ground and one will be 12 volts.
Any reason you don't want to use a heated O2 sensor?
If you intend to use the stock-type one wire O2 sensor, the plug in the harness for it might still exist. I use a three wire heated O2 sensor (AC-Delco AFS-74) and wired up a plug to connect to such a sensor. However, I used the wire and connector from a stock-type one wire O2 sensor plugged into the original plug, with the wire cut and wired up to the 3-pin connector for the 3 wire sensor in order to connect the O2 signal to the stock wiring. This way I could use a one-wire stock type sensor if the need be by just unplugging the setup for the 3 wire sensor. I believe the wiring sold by Casper's Electronics for heated sensor use is also configured in this way and does not require any wires to be cut.
You might want to trace back the current wiring for your O2 sensor and determine if the original O2 wiring and connector is still intact. No need to start cutting things if you can connect things in a plug-n-play manner.
On the 86/87 cars the harness wiring for the O2 will be a purple wire that runs roughly under the throttle body.
I have a rough idle problem and thought it may be a quick fix to return to a stock o2 sensor.
Then try resetting your IAC. Also, you may want to check for vaccum leaks. I've had problems with both.
I was told that the heated 02 will not code.. Is this true?
Not true ... they often take a lot longer to code, but eventually they will if they have enough lead contamination.
Often times they will get really "lazy" without throwing a code like a normal sensor.