So this just occurred yesterday, both codes showed up, I took a look at the maf and it seems clean, can't find my torx bit to open it up and clean it with maf cleaner, when i had the car on in park the idle started at 1200rpm then after about 20 seconds dropped to 800rpm and sounded like it wanted to shut off. I have a 3.0 b6, I assume that rough idle means its a vacuum leak? not sure, honestly. One of the clips that connects the intake box to the maf is missing but i want to say the vacuum leak wouldnt even register until after the maf correct? So what i mostly need help on is what places to check for for the leak, if someone has a diagram for all the places the leak could occur would be awesome, any other advise would be great, i'm trying to do this on the cheap i dont have the money to take it to a shop right now considering, at this moment i have to take my dog the vet cause he's sick. so sorry if this post is all over the place, hope someone helps me out. thanks.


Brandon

 

A vacuum leak you can generally hear when the engine is running, my suspect would be the MAF sensor. First unplug it while its running, if it runs better than MAF isn't working, if the engine immediately dies its fine and you probably have a vac leak.

P.S A vacuum leak is air being sucked into the engine that the MAF sensor doesn't read, meaning after the MAF sensor.

 

So I unplugged the maf sensor thing, the car didn't die but the idle didnt seem to improve really, instead of sitting at 800rpms it was more like 850rpms. could it be anything else? I still have the two codes up.

If i cleared the codes, how long does it take for them to pop back up if the problem is still there, are we talking right away, or do i have to drive it a certain distance or is it just a time thing?

Thanks in advance.

 

If the car didn't die when unplugging the MAF sensor the ECM has adapted to not using it as an input, meaning the MAF sensor is bad.

As for erasing the fault codes, it would depend on how bad the fault actually is. If its intermittent, it could take days, if its a hard fault, it could be seconds.

 

ok so i removed the codes when i unplugged the maf earlier this morning and i've driven the car about 65 miles and those codes haven't returned, unfortunately on the way home from work i got a new set of codes.
p0300 Random/Multiple Cylinder Misfire Detected, then the associated codes for cylinder 1, 2, 5, 3, 6. I'm not sure but i want to assume these codes could be part of the other codes i had previously or whatever air issue is going on with the car. This is beyond my knowledge so any more help would be grateful. thanks again.

 

I had similar problems with my 3.0 B6. Rough idle/misfires/codes etc. Took it in and it looks like i had a blown diaphragm that was causing the rough idle. The part costs me about 200 plus labor. I'll have to go look at my receipt to find the exact name of the part. Hope this helps.

 

Hmm.. that doesnt sound awesome at all. I dunno if this is related or not, I was just thinking it was a wheel balance or alignment issue, but I erased the codes earlier this morning and drove it around for about 15 minutes, the car had a slight vibration starting around 35mph, i ended up on the highway and whenever i put my foot on the gas the vibration got worse, even if it was a slight touch and only a single mph in terms of acceleration. Got home a couple hours ago and turned the car on for about 10 minutes, and the misfiring codes came back up, this time for all 6 cylinders. If i do have to replace the maf sensor it wouldnt be until tuesday, and i can do it myself. if it was what TheGabe suggests, then damn i dont even know what that is. Is it something i could replace myself or a pretty annoyingly difficult job. Just want to know if you all think it would be the maf and once thats replaced it would sort out all these issues, or is it something completely different now.
Thanks in advance, hopefully someone can come around and help out.

Brandon