I bought an aresol can of cleaner specifcally designed for the mass airflow sensor. My car is a little sluggish off the line, and it was suggested to clean the mass airflow sensor. I took it all apart yesterday, the air filter, then the sensor. I see an electrical plug in, can I just pull it off? When spraying the cleaner in the part, can i push open the doors with my finger to clean the inside? ANy other thoughts?

 

Yes, you can push the door open for cleaning, but......

Your '82 doesn't have a mass air flow "sensor". You have an air flow *meter*. Engine vacuum pulls the door open which then mechanically moves a wiper arm across a resistance board, just like a rheostat. The varying resistance is used by the ECU to control fuel injector "on" time.

It can't hurt to have the passageway clean but I don't think it'll help anything, either. The "business" end of the meter is under the sealed black plastic lid. You can pry the lid off, carefully, and inspect for a problem with the wiper or the wires...sometimes they're worn out

Cheers
DD

 

The Lucas-built mass air flow meter is a wonderful device from the "steam-powered' fuel injection era. No digital stuff with this kit !! It's all based on real amps and real volts.

As said here there is not much one can really do with these boxes other than check them. The black panel on top can be removed (with care, it is glued on), to check the potentiometer track, and also a tiny little pair of contacts upon which the whole of the fuel system depends ! The contact area is very small, like a pin-head. These little contacts are open when the flap is at rest, and you will observe that when the flap is moved by hand in the same way as if the engine was running, the contacts close.

Now over time the springiness of the contacts lessens and the contact pressure can fail intermittently, and cause sudden and complete power loss. This normally happens at a very inconvenient time, like overtaking in Lane 3 of a dual carriageway going up a 1 in 10 (*** near Prestatyn , North Wales), with heavy traffic in Lanes 1 & 2.

The reason for the power loss is the volts passed via these contacts switch the fuel pump relay. It is bypassed when starting the car, then the contacts remain open because the flap is held open by manifold vacuum.

The funny thing is that once one has got to the roadside, and recovered from the shock, the engine can then be re-started easily and will be OK all the way home, until the next time it happens !

In my case, I bent the contacts to increase their contact pressure, and also cleaned them, and had no more trouble, but I did give some thought to bypassing them and using something else to tell the fuel pump the engine was running.

 

Has anyone ever developed a MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensor setup for these cars? I only ask because I have an '85 BMW 6 series and there are a couple of MAF kits out there that replace the AFM with a MAF which eliminates the swinging door. It also requires a chip change which the developers spent time working on.

Anyway, just curious.

Thanks.

 

Not that I've heard of.

AJ6 Engineering does offer a modified AFM, though, among other 4.2 performance enhancements

Cheers
DD

 

It was the AJ6 Engineering website that advised me about the contacts problem in the MAF box in an excellent article on the XK engine.

http://www.jagweb.com/aj6eng/42efi/index.php