02 Boxster, universal oxygen sensor solution??
 

ECL on for a few days.... Went to Autozone for the code, it shows P0139. According to this article that a gentleman shared with me ( https://sites.google.com/site/mikefocke2/oxygensensors
P0139 ) , it should be the passenger side, the sensor after the cat... But the dude in autozone, confidently told me it should be the driver side before cat....

Well my questions are:

1, Who is right.... I guess I trust the article more than the dude in autozone...

2, I saw on the article that universal sensors could be used and save a lot of money.... Who have a detail article about this? If I want buy universal sensors, which one to buy ? And how to wire them?

3, also I saw a price difference between the upstream oxygen sensor and the downstream sensor.... Some people say the only difference is the wire length...is it true?

1) Mike is right -- it's (P0139) the passenger side (US cars) which is cylinder Bank 1 and the downstream O2 sensor.

2) I tend to stick with OEM parts when it comes to emission-related components as I've heard from many other people that have had problems with non-OEM components for various other cars.

3) The upstream O2 sensor on several DME versions (your MY02 is DME 7.2) have a wide-band O2 sensor (not sure about DME 7.2) -- these are different than the narrow-band (typical) O2 sensors and are more expensive. The downstream O2 sensors are still the typical narrow-band O2 sensors.

Regards,
paul...

I bought these Bosch universals and haven't had a problem with them. However, they're a risk, as you've read in other articles. If you've got the time/money, buy the direct fit ones. I had the money, but didn' t have the time to wait on getting the direct fits shipped to me. I was pressed for time, so I bought these universal fit ones from a local car parts store and took my time splicing them to ensure I got them right. 7.5 months and 10,236 miles later, I haven't had a single problem with my O2 sensors.