Learned a valuable lesson this week, and that is not to clean your MAF with throttle body cleaner!!

I was having some wobbly idle issues, so I decided to shoot some aerosol throttle body cleaner into the intake tube to clean things up...

Nothing really improved by doing it, but after a few days I started to stall out at red lights and the check engine light would come on after warming up.

So I picked up an OBD1 code reader and lo and behold, low voltage MAF... (I don't remember the code #).... So I removed the air intake tube, and opened up the air filter box to find a BLACK K&N filter inside!!

A quick trip to Lordco auto parts to buy a cleaner/oil kit, and I notice they have MAF cleaner on the shelf, so I asked the parts guy if it was basically the same as throttle body cleaner... His response: "Don't ever use TB cleaner on your MAF!!!" I just learned that TB cleaner leaves behind a residue that is supposed to inhibit further gunk buildup, and will coat the sensor/wire on the MAF, causing you much grief...

Came home with a can of the MAF cleaner, took the cover plate from behind the MAF to expose the wire/sensor and sprayed the heck out of it a few times. Cleaned and re-oiled the K&N, and spent a loooong time cleaning 15 years of funk from the throttle plate..

So now that it's back together, HOLY COW!! What a difference!! WOOOOOHHOOOOOOOO!!!

 

nice and good to know

 

Cool stuff.Didn't know that myself.

 

Excellent tip and great to know

 

I had no idea either - Thanks for the info! Glad to hear you're back in business!