My was descreened without me really knwoing what was going on so I'm wondering if thats hurting my car or its performance? I head both sides saying it was better and that it hurt the performance so i'm just looking for some facts.

 

It really does not help you enough to keep it like that.....I've heard it will hurt more than help your engine gain performance....without a screen, crap could get sucked in your engine.

It's basically not worth the risk.

 

From what I hear, you can gain a few ponies by descreening the MAF, but it is kind of risky. The reason I say this is one of my friends took out the wire in his MAF by descreening it and spent several hundred dollars buying one brand new from GM because he couldn't find a used one.

 

I remember reading something on this board about descreening......someone asked the same question this dude asked....the good and the bad of it.

If I remember correctly, most of the people said it wasn't worth having it off. There's basically more risk than gain.

 

I have heard that removing it can actually hurt the performance of your car. It's there to take turbulant air and somewhat straighten it out thru the screen so that the wire gets an accurate reading of the amount of incoming air. If you take it out, then you won't get as accurate a reading. I have also seen a few before/after dyno pulls and track times that show there really isn't any gain/loss in performance. I don't think it really matters one way or the other performance wise IMHO.

 

You're going to get a wide array of opinions on this one. The PCM "tuners" don't like alterations to the MAF. From an engineering point of view, I can't see it helping any more than it hurts (the post immediately above has the correct info).

But you are going to find that of all the people who have done it, 1/3 see miraculous HP gains (seldom backed up with any more data than SOTP), 1/3 see poorer fuel mileage, rougher idle and related problems, and the other 1/3 say they didn't notice any difference.

If your car is running well, it must not be hurting it. You could always borrow one with a screen, run it for a week or so, and see if at the end of the week you noticed any problems or improvements.

And to clarify.... this is for the GM MAF sensors used in the 4th Gen F-Bodies. The earlier Bosch units, used in the 3rd Gen F-Body cars show a major flow improvement when BOTH screens are removed, along with the cooling fins. But the Bosch screen is a heavy weight metal wire, and there is one on the inlet and one of the outlet of the MAF.

 

Exactly what Fred said. The 3rd gen MAF showed such a flow improvement and large power increase. Because of this many many people took this knowledge and tried to apply this to the 4th gen MAF's for the same reasons. But it's an apples or oranges type deal. It's not the same setup, not the same MAF, not the same screen. I actually have a screen sitting right here next to me. I took mine out years ago and never thought anything of it. I am going to be hitting the track soon trying to fix a high RPM backfire/pop and this is one of the possible causes. If nothing else I will get some form of track information as to the effects.


Bottom line, I feel that the very slight POSSIBLE gains do not outweigh the very Probable harmful effects of removing the screen