MY car is running lean, stinky, rattles.
So I disconnected the MAF.

Am I going to hurt my car worse running on factory specs than running it lean?

Car runs a lil better and no symptoms of lean, shift points moved up a few hundred rpm's. Still has hesitation at highway speeds.

I want to run it a few days in a non lean state to try and clean the cats and 02's a lil bit.

 

innzane, running with the MAF sensor off is not going to hurt anything as long as you don't have an O2 sensor that is bad. You are now forcing the computer to look at the throttle position and the O2 sensors to figure out how much gas to inject into the cylinders. So, as long as you don't have codes on those, you should be golden.

Sounding like you have a bad MAF sensor.

 

Cool, thanks Thermo.
Think I will try that out.

 

How's your fuel consumption?
Poor mpg?

 

I have honestly never figured my gas mileage so not sure if it is bad or not.

Should my MAF sensor say TOYOTA on it? It does.

But anyways, I took it out, killed a whole can of TB cleaner on it trying
to save that $90 and it seems to have done the trick. For now at least.
I finally got to feel all the horses, neato.

 

Inzanne, I would think that your MAF sensor should NOT say Toyota on it. That may be the short of your problem. While the outside may be identical, the internals are what really matter. I would give DR Dome a PM and see if he can get you a MAF sensor. I know he has spare parts laying about and should be able to hook you up in no time flat as he is up in Philly, PA. Might even be worth a short trip up to his place (nice guy, met him myself).

 

I believe our MAF sensors fit some Toyota and Lexus models if I remember correct when I was searching for my replacement, so that might not be an issue.

What codes do you have? There has to be some with the issue you are describing.

 

Codes, I started with cruise not available and P0174 lean code.
It was only on the one bank so I did not really suspect the MAF as it seemed more to be a vacuum leak. I replaced, cleaned, smoked, starter fluided and never found a vac leak. While doing the starter fluid check I got no response from anywhere, so I shot a blast into the airbox to make sure the car would react, and it did. But in doing that it added the P0171 lean code.

I had cleaned the maf prior, but did not know there were two tiny elements hidden way back inside the sensor, I only thought there was the visible element. I did it on the car before, but this time I took it off since I planned on replacing it, and then I saw the two tiny elements.

I got a wonderful parts car right down the road now, gonna go hit it up for a few things, I will see what they want for the MAF just to have it, but right now it ain't broke so I ain't fixing it I need to focus on some maintenance I have neglected while not knowing if I would ever get this fixed. And some tires ARGH!!