Cleaning the MAF

[slipperj5]

hmm no response lol

[m_melen]

2 year old threads have a tendency of doing that

[Boot]

Great thread! I just finished my MAF clean and it totally fixed my idle hunting issues. Used electrical cleaner and cut out one of the mesh screens to remove the gunk built up on sensor bracket.

*warning* - Since i didnt pay enough attention to some of the instructions on this thread I thought i would make this clear for others attempting this. Unless you are prepared to do some soldering DONT try removing the sensor plug on the MAF (the one held on by 4 tiny screws). You WILL break off all the solders by doing that and be forced to spend the next hour cutting out a totally unnecessary amount of silicone... not a great idea if you need to get to work early the next day and you dont have the supplies....

[nickdutch]

hey what about yousing intake medic on it? its a spray like carb cleaner ?

[got_boost!]

Read the entire thread ppl. There's no need for all this. Take the MAF off of your filter (usually just four bolts) and then loosen the hose clamp on the hose side of things and pull that sucker off. If it gives you grief it's prolly cause it's just old and stuck on there. Give it a wiggle. Use electrical contact cleaner. It's like $3 at crappy tire. Carb cleaner or brake cleaner or any other kind of cleaner is too abrasive for either that tiny little wire of a sensor or the rubber/plastic parts around it and you risk doing even more damage than good. Try not to cut the wire mesh if you don't have to. Really there's no need. Put a long plastic nozzle on the can, stick it through the mesh, and blast the living snot out of that thin wire and everything around it. You can literally use the entire can and soak everything. No worries. Spary the mesh aswell to clean them up. You can spray from both directions. Electrical contact cleaner is meant for this and dries super quick with littlew to no residue. You don't need to take the element off, cut the mesh, or pull the actual MAF appart to do this. This is "Cleaning the MAF" and most people don't have to venture farther than this. If, however, this doesn't fix your problem, then take the time to pick the gasket/sealant out of the cover for the actual sensor and then re-solder the FOUR solder connections holding your MAF sensor plug to the board. You don't need to pull the plug off the board, remove the old solder, pull the circuit board out, or anything else that complicated. You can use any liquid intake gasket sealant to reseal the cover. The black stuff does work just fine and it's maybe $5 at crappy tire. Again though, it is rare you have to do this step and more times than not it's something else that's your problem. However, if you're comfortable around these things, it really isn't hard to do at all and it is a little peace of mind I suppose.
Including pulling the cover off, and the resoldering and sealing, this entire process should not take more than two hours.

[jayskyline]

My guy just told me to get an actual maf cleaner from Canadian tire and take off the air filter, spray while revving the engine,
Agree or not?

[Skym]

With some MAF's you can remove the sensor to clean it properly.

But just spraying MAF sensor with CRC MAF cleaner should be enough to clean sensor.

CRC have a videoclip that shows how to do this and explains why using carb cleaner, etc is a bad idea -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPT8rL0noYg

Like said above, some use contact cleaner.

[Spencer87]

I should be doing this this weekend. I'll see what I can do for pix along the way.

[Ryosuke]

hey just wondering... im planning on checking maf and spark plugs my gts has been idling weird....like it sounds like if something is stuck in my exhaust it just sputters and sputters where as last week it was a stable note for idle.... a few garages have told me to check spark plugs, but im reading this maf write up and it makes me think maybe my maf is faulty or needs cleaning. anyone else ever have a rough idle on rb20det ??

[Skym]

Missing at idle can be due to running too thick oil, say a w60 (factory oil specs is 7.5w30 and they use a 5w30 oil off the shelf) which makes engine sluggish and combine that with o2 sensor voltage hitting go lean, go rich trigger voltages slower than it should on ECU (due to engine being sluggish to respond), ECU adjusting ignition timing to suit. Basically engine is staying lean too long that can make engine start missing (lean missfire).

Or stuttering (similar to coilpack missing) can be due to airleak just behind MAF (loose intake hose clamp on MAF or on front of turbo, crack in rubber intake piping inbetwen ribs, crack in rubber intake piping under intake hose clamp, etc) that can make MAF make ECU select richer parts of fuel map and engine misses. Basically MAF gets 2x airsources instead of one.

Coilpacks is the other (grey marks on both sides of coilpack under mounting bracket can mean coilpack is leaking and sparkplug is getting a weak spark). This result's in a black spark plug tip on cylinder with leaking coilpack. You can dip sides of coilpacks in resin to fill in crack, reseal coilpacks (temporary solution). They crack on the join between two halfs of coilpack. They can fail this way due to incorrect sparkplug gap or heatrange. You should replace coilpacks every 100,000km as part of routine maintenance.

[M0nkeyMark]

edit: changed maf with a spare and bogging solved