Well aparently my brother fried my MAF a couple hours ago. Here were the symptoms: wacky rpm bobbing, and no power. i got the car towed back to the mech where i have been since 8 this morning puting on my new rotors, and whole tune up for the car. I am almost positive its the MAF, if you unplug it the car runs fine. what the mech thought was that my brother floored it so hard that he overloaded the MAF and made the turbos back fire. There were exhaust soot in the little MAF filter. Do you guys have any other ideas? I dont feel like spending $285 if its not the MAF.

 

Before anything else, check all your hoses. If you have a tear or a hole, you will lose driveability. When you unplug the MAF you go into limp mode which is pure calculation on the ECU's part, hence the better idle. Do you have an aftermarket filter that requires oiling (K&N, etc.)? if so you may have oil on the hot wire.Your MAF wires may be dirty. Try cleaning them with a light spray of a pure of alcohol as you can find. If its broke its broke. You can't over load the MAF with air and fuel injected cars don't back fire unless there is a very leaky injector. Even a compressor surge would have to be pretty big to damage the MAF.

 

LOL, this is a good one.

You can NOT get a backfire to the MAF, it's a turbo car, if anything a backfire will hurt the turbo's & if it makes to the MAF, the turbo's will be gone.

Unhooking the MAF DOES NOT PUT THE CAR IN LIMP MODE. It puts it into MAP mode, & while having less power, is perfectly fine to drive. If it was a boost leak, the MAF plug/unplug would not make a difference.

Do you have a K&N or other type of oiled air filter? Let me guess it was just cleaned? Your MAF is fowled, & needs to be cleaned of all the oil in it. After that it should be fine. If not, you are STUCK having to buy a new one.

 

Yes I did have a K&N filter in, BUT,i never cleaned it. In fact i replacedthe filterthis morning (before all this stuff happened) with a non oiled filter. I drove it home with the the new filter in and everything was fine. 15 min after I was home, my bro took it and then it had problems. We tried to clean it, but it still didnt work. I will not argue with you guys about the car backfiring, I agree with both of you, maybe i just misunderstood him. Any ways there was something on the filter on the MAF, I am not exactly sure what it was. Thanks for both you replies.

2ks4- how bad woud it be to drive the car without the MAF connected? So far I dont want to risk it, but i am curious.

 

How did you clean it? Most stores now sell MAF cleaner, if not intake, or electrical cleaner will work.

It is fine to drive it disconnected, just don't hammer it. There will be a noticeable loss of power & throttle response.

 

We cleaned it with electrical cleaner and as soon as we hooked it back up the engine started that wacky rpm's

 

so we found out what the problem was and it wasnt the MAF (even though it became fried after the main problem) the bottom platic part to my drivers side intercooler popped off. My mechanic ended up ghetto rigging the thing because I just wanted to drive it back to school and worry about buying some later. I guess I am getting some RS4 intercoolers now!

 

blowing and intercooler pipe will happen, just tighten that bad boy up with a new clamp and you should be good to go.