Upstream fuel/air sensor - DENSO - $30 !!

Air- Fuel Ratio Sensor-OE Style Air/Fuel Ratio Sensor DENSO 234-9002 | eBay

Is that a genuine denso or a Chinese knock off denso. You really got to watch on ebay as sometimes the price is too good can mean it's a junk or clone denso. I would just pull the o2 a/f from rock auto or someplace reputable. It's not worth getting burned on.

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I don't think ebay would allow that. Guess we'll see. If so I'll get my $ back - you can bet on that Seller has good record.

Is there usually any problems installing these?

You're kidding, right?

I bet more than half of everything sold on eBay is in violation of intelectual property, patent, or copyright law.

Case in point: I bought a set of "OEM Toyota Iridium spark plugs" on eBay. The plugs are supposed to last 120K miles. The originals I took out of the car had 120K miles on them and they still looked like new.

The "new" ones came in Toyota branded boxes and looked legit, except the boxes seemed a little lower quality than other Toyota parts I've bought. (red flag #1) The boxes were labled, "Made in Japan", but they were shipped to me from China. (red flag #2)

30K miles later, the car is running like crap and throwing misfire codes.

I pull the plugs, and this is what I find.



Those plugs should have a fine tip and a .044" gap. Look particularly at the second one from the top. There's not enough feeler guages in a set to measure that gap... so there's no way there's any iridium in those plugs. And yes, they were 1/3 the cost of OEM plugs. (red flag #3)

So my worry about the super cheap air/fuel sensor is not that it won't work at all, but that it won't last.

Caveat emptor.

Mostly the issue changing the sensors are the nuts and studs being rusted on exhaust pipe. Might have to work at that to change them. Also take your time getting the electrical connector loose. Make sure you find the clip and release it.

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It's probably hard to find anything that isn't a knockoff on eBay these days. A couple of my fun adventures buying parts on eBay:

1) I needed to do a TB/WP on my '99. So I looked and found an auction that was a bit cheaper than Aircabinman and said it was '100% genuine OEM brand parts'. Pretty good deal! I got the box in the mail, opened it, and lol, the joke's on me. It was a bunch of white boxes with plain black lettering on them saying 'OEM brand'. As in, the brand name was 'OEM'. Not even bothering to print up fake Toyota boxes. Hah, I asked for a refund, they paid me all my money back and I sent them their crappy knockoff parts (they really looked subpar) back and ordered from Aircabinman the way I should have done the first time around. That cost a little more, but everything in it is genuine.

2) I had an injector go bad and after looking at lots of listing on eBay, I got a set of 6 beand new genuine Denso injectors. The first warning sign - that I didn't notice - Denso doesn't make stock injectors, it's Aisan. Second warning sign: A set of 6 brand new genuine OEM Toyota injectors for $250? Not going to happen. Anyhow, got them in, they were just in some fishy looking plastic bags, no boxes, no attempt to make it look legit. But the injectors themselves? Really good looking fakes. They had a skimpier looking red o-ring on one end, but other than that - looked great. So I rolled the dice and installed them (the car was apart, not drivable because of the bad injector). And the car ran like crap. Slow cold starts - like cranking for 10 seconds. Somewhat slow hot starts. A somewhat uneven idle. I complained to the seller - they said the bags were because they buy them in bulk without packaging (lol, I'm sure they do, just not from a legit source). They said to drive it for 100 miles to see if the injectors improve (???), they only got worse, so they accepted a return with full refund.

Ebay is like the wild west for parts. Sometimes you score a deal, sometimes you don't. I sell on Ebay but only used parts so it's pretty easy to tell what's real and what's not.

A cheap O2 sensor isn't going to hurt anything, worst it can do is throw a code or get poor gas mileage. So $30 for a probably DENSO part isn't terrible. Fun fact: Auto-zone will sell DENSO parts packaged in their in-house branded items. But one box can have a DENSO part, the next will have some aftermarket junk so it's like automotive part roulette on what you will get.

I buy used parts for eBay but mostly its the basics. you can tell if a door handle is oem legit or not. Sensors, injectors those sorts of things you can really get burned on and waste a pile of time.

I look at it this way, how often do you really change these sensors. If the OEM lasted 20 years. Why not buy the exact replacement and get another 20 years. Electronics sensors do wear out.

I own 8 Toyota vehicles. Of these 8. I only changed 3 O2 sensor and 2 A/F sensors. Buy the Iridium plugs from Toyota or Rock Auto etc. Air Filters etc. With all but one over 100K miles. Toyota Engineers things to last.

I used to by junk years ago. I got tired of replacing the same part 2 to 4 times. When if you bought the OEM part you change it once in most cases.


Only 5 of the 8 are 4 Runners.. { I exclude the parts mobile}

Just to be clear, I'm not totally against eBay. The bluetooth dongle I use for my OBD connection to my phone came from China -- via Amazon or eBay, I don't recall. It cost me $10 and is a knock off.
The USB interface I use for Techstream came from China via eBay, again for about $10, and is certainly a knock off of the X-Horse hardware that would cost
more than $150.
Both work fine.

Careful what you post online about it, the Trump trade police might come might come and confiscate your Chinese goods lol!

What do you think of these?

Spark Plug Double Iridium Bosch 9600 Minimum order 4 spark plug,price for 1 plug | eBay

That's the problem -- it's hard to tell by looking at a picture online. I just Googled "counterfeit vs legit Denso plugs" and among the hits found this:

How to Spot Fake DENSO Spark Plugs | Toyota Sienna Forum - siennachat.com

He has a really good write-up and fantastic pics on comparison of the two.

Like others said some items like sparkplugs can easily be counterfeited, had it happen several times with PC memory and USB sticks, they work until they run out of memory and start over-writing its own data, geesh.

I'd try amazon, yes scammers exist there too yet if you have prime or a friend with it, the prices are a tad highter sometimes but the free shipping back/forth can't be beat, which brings some peace of mind in the purchase. Luck and enjoy the Runner!

Well - looks like I screwed up.

I'll be sending all this stuff back. With buyer protection I won't have to return it. They will step in, as they have in the past, and return my money.

Your truck is do DAMN fine!