There are about 4 levels of O2 sensors you can buy:
From most expensive to least:
- Porsche branded
- Bosch with pigtails attached by a very expensive machine ($100k+) and tested..the exact part Porsche buys and reboxes
- Bosh without pigtails. You crimp on your old wires and good luck
- universal which may or may not give out the same signals the Porsche ECM is expecting and requires you to crimp the wires
No you can't solder.
Any muffler shop can do the install if you don't want to, mine cost a half hour in labor...about 5 minutes on the rack. Using the Bosch part with pigtails takes the risk out of the crimping and the part is known to work. The universals are much more problematic and to save such little $ just didn't seem worth the risk to me. No sense paying extra for the Porsche part number spray painted on the Bosch part.
Smog tests usually test for pending codes...problems that are there but haven't gotten bad enough to trigger a CEL yet.
A table of part numbers is
here
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