ICP Sensor and threads

[lwillson]

Good Day,

After ordering an ICP sensor from ebay, and expecting the sensor to be the right one, it finally arrived. I guess I should have known when the sensor that is half the price than every sensor anywhere else would be the one I need for the 7.3.

Either way, I ended up with a sensor that had the wrong threads on it. The outside diameter of the threads was smaller on the new sensor, and the threads were also a bit coarser. I knew I was in trouble.

The sensor on the left is the faulty original one. The sensor on the right is the new ebay sensor



I then figured since I couldn't do anything with the engine, I would need to find some kind of adapter to make the sensor work. At this point, I was at $80 for the new sensor, and the cheapest one in town was $160, and it would need 2 days to arrive.

I went to the hydraulic fitting shop, and asked what they had. First he determined what threads were on each sensor.

The original sensor had a #5 SAE/ORB fitting on it, and the new sensor was a regular 12mm metric fine thread. They said there was no such adapter known to man, as the sensor had to tighten up against something. I then picked his brain to see what they did have that I could possibly make work. I left that shop with a couple of #5 SAE/ORB plugs, and headed off to Bolt Supply House to buy a 12mm fine thread nut.





The hole needed to go all the way through the plug, to allow oil to get to the sensor, and I needed to make it a bit bigger in the top, to allow the new sensor to poke through the nut a little bit when tight.





I aligned everything in the vise


Then I welded the nut to the top of the plug.


Then cleaned up the new adapter, and installed the new sensor to it.


After installing it, the total length only ended up being about 1/2" longer than the original sensor.


I then cleaned up the wiring with contact cleaner, and re-installed the sensor, and hooked it back up


The truck seems to run better now, I haven't had a chance hook up the code reader to see if I have any problems.

The transmission seems to shift better now, which doesn't make much sense to me, but I remember reading something somewhere about ICP and transmissions. Anyone know?

Hopefully this helps anyone who cheaps out and tries the ebay way out

[ianstew]

nice! .