I am a complete newbie when it comes to Honda cars, though I have some experience wrenching on motorcycles.

I recently bought a 96 civic lx, and about a month after I bought the car the check engine light came on. The guy at my local garage told me that it was a "catalytic" error message, and that it could be either my O2 sensor or my catalytic conerter that was bad. He recommended replacing the sensor first ($200), waiting for the light to come back on, then going for the converter ($660 for the part plus labor).

Here are my questions:

1. When I lift the hood and look at the converter/header unit on my car, there are two oxygen sensors. ANy way of knowing which one is bad? I did not know that there were two at the time I talked to my mechanic.


2. The converter price seemed a little high. From what I have read OEM converters are expensive. I found some aftermarket converter/header combos from autoparts warehouse that were about half the price
http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/ap...96&modelid=396

Are they just garbage?

From my days wrenching on dirtbikes, I am tempted to throw something a little more performance oriented on the car, but it is just a family car I use to cart my kids around and haul my bicycle to the more distant trailheads.

One final thing. From the looks of things under the hood, this work seems pretty straighforward, and I am thinking on doing it myself. Any pitfalls, I should be aware of?


Cheers, and thanks for the advice (if you are still reading).

CAW