I haven't done the work yet. No one seems to actually have the part in stock. I ordered it from on ebay ford parts dealer. Prob wont have it til next week. I'll try to snap what pics I can - difficult to do under the car.
No clue what caused it to go bad. The dealership said they just go out, I imagine the sensor has just gotten plugged up with gunk or something along those lines (car has +200k miles. I spent a week in the mountains on some very dusty and dirty roads right before this happened - not sure if that has anything to do with it or not.
It's my daily (other car is a 66 galaxie) and the tags are two months expired due to failing emissions, so I am very motivated to get this resolved. I'll try to post back with results.
Ok thank you. I think I mistakenly shorted mine out when I put a 20 amp fuse in the F1.34 slot instead of the F1.35 slot when replacing what I thought was a blown fog light fuse in slot F1.35
When I turned the key it stuttered and ******. Never had that happen before. I turned the key back to off and then tried to start again. This time it started and immediately threw that P0453 code. Now after looking into my mistake in the fuse box I remedied the blown fog light fuse BUT if I take that 20 amp fuse out of F1.34 the suv will not start. By that I mean turn key to on and nothing, no cranking at all. Everything acts like it is supposed to start ( lights on, radio, dash lights up ) but it does nothing without that fuse in there now.
To make it even more nonsensical, when i put the fuse back in and start it, I can pull the fuse while running and the suv still runs. Turn it off and try again, no go.
F1.34 doesnt reference anything about emissions. It does mention the PCM though. So I think I may have shorted the wiring or connection from that part that communicates with the PCM when I gave it power from the 20 amp fuse.
Bananas right. I dont even use the fog lights lol. I was just surprised they didnt come on when I tried them one day and here I am now with this absurd emissions code that Ford requires you to drop an entire gas tank to hopefully remedy. And probably like you, I had to search Google for hrs just to even find something about this part. Even the helpful guys that posted technical pics it still wasnt specific in the diagrams. And the fact that 3 parts have the same part number in them even made this more of a headache.
Cant wait to hear how yours turned out.
BTW, I had just passed emissions test 3 weeks before this incident. So I got lucky in a way until next July cause it really isnt causing me any mechanical issues. Just a CEL.