Ideas?

 

swoop, I would say to drive the car over to an auto parts place and see if they will read the codes for you. Then post the codes here. What you are describing can be a lot of things and short of you buying part after part until you find the right one can get a little expensive.

 

=(

 

Open the hood, listen for vacuum leaks, brake booster area, then the front left side of the intake. There are 3 or 4 tubes and areas that leak, all will give you the cruise not available and throw some phantom codes. Those are the easiest and quickest to fix and at some point you'll need to adress them anyway so might as well do it now, and they're cheaper than an O2 sensor or cat converter.

 

swoop22, since you are getting lean codes on both banks 1 and 2, odds are you have either a dirty mass air flow sensor or you have a leak in the intake between the the mass air flow sensor and the split in the intake just after the throttle body. I would first check to see if the ribbed boot attached to the throttle body has a rip in it. That would be the most likely place for a leak. Make sure to check the underside too. After that, I would clean the mass air flow sensor with some MAF sensor cleaner (don't use carb cleaner or anything else other than MAF sensor cleaner). After that, odds are, a good look by someone that is familiar with cars is going to make things a lot easier.

 

Swoop,
Had the same codes about a year ago. MAF was replaced and away I went. Hope it works out for you.

 

:-/

 

silly question, i know

 

swoop, get some MAF cleaner and then pull out the MAF sensor (little lump in the intake right next to the battery. Just don't spray the wires inside the sensor directly, bounce the spray off of the side of the sensor hole. If you want to clean the throttlebody, you will need to remove the intake and then using one hand, manually open the butterfly valve and then if you see brown/black, spray it with the throttlebody cleaner (different stuff than the MAF sensor cleaner or carb cleaner). Keep spraying until all the brown/black stuff goes away or won't get any lighter. Re-install the intake. You will more than likely have a hard time starting the car due to "flooding" out the car. Keep cranking and it will adventually start. It will also run like hell for the first 15 seconds or so. May also trip the CEL too. But, all is good.

 

HEy Swoop, I don't very often disagree with Thermo as he is usually right, but it's a very simple project, takes 10-15 minutes to clean the TB and the MAF.

It's 4 bolts holding the TB on to the intake, the hose clamps are odd but after working with them you'll wonder whyanyone uses anything else, get pliers, pinch the 2 bumps on top together and the clamp flips open. Take the throttle body and get throttle body cleaner and spray it all over the whole thing. Clean lint free rag and wipe it down, repaeat until it's spotless. Make sure you open and close the butterfly flap while you spray, I took the next step or removing the TPS and everything else off the TB and getting contact cleaner and doing them too. When I was finished it looked brand new. Same with the MAF. I cleaned it wiped it down, cleaned the sensor and contacts, then put it back together. All in took 30 minutes and completely fixed a ton of false readings on the ECM not to mention system failures, limp mode etc.

I finally diagnosed my issue to a faulty TB from the XJ guys so I didn't really care if I wrecked the TB trying to fix it as if I couldn't I had to get a new one any way......you might spend an extra 5 minutes being careful.

 

SWM, yes, you are correct in that removing the throttlebody to clean it like you suggest is a "better" way to do things. But, if you do things that way, you also have to break into the coolant hoses to get any decent movement of the throttle body which involves a little more work. To each their own. Its 6 of one, half a dozen of another.

 

:-/