What is the safest & best solvent to use when cleaning the MAF sensor? Also what to use..... (Q-Tip, Rag, etc..)

Thanks

 

Just use electrical contact cleaner....and no q-tips, rags etc.

 

Do not mess with touching the MAF, you risk breaking it or messing up its calibrations. Use electrical contact cleaner like you would buy at Radio Shack. Just spray it on and let it dry off, it won't take long, and if the MAF has never been cleaned you will REALLY notice a difference in the clean vs dirty.

 

Sweet, thanks guys...I think i'll be heading to Radio Shack this weekend

 

what you just spray it inside, thats it and let it dry? or do you take it apart

 

u spray little wires that are connected to the prongs..u will see what i am talking about once you take the MAF out from the car.
Marcin

 

ok i was going to use tb cleaner on it

 

That might work, but i would stay on the safe side and use electrical parts cleaner....TB Cleaner might leave some kinda of residue (SP)
MArcin

 

The electrical contact cleaner is what I used on mine also. I bought it from radio shack, and it worked very good, Apparently my MAFS was dirty because my Throttle response seemed better after a couple of good cleanings.

 

ok but do i still have to take the maf off or can i just spray it inside from the screen side in

 

Steps to cleaning a MAF properly.

1) Take MAF out of car

2) Very carefully, take the ends off by removing the Torx driver screws

3) With a paper towel, very lightly rub the gunk off

You will not clean off the gunk by just spraying contact cleaner on it and letting it dry. It will NOT dissolve the gunk that will be on it.

You will not break anything if you are very careful. The internals aren't that sensitive, and by no means will you screw up the "calibration". All a MAF is is three aluminum bars and three resistors. You'll see when you open it up. I accidently dropped the sensor with the ends off, and lo and behold my car runs fine.

It's a piece of cake, and it isn't a biological agent that requires detox suit and super tedious handling.

 

Take the MAF out of the car, and also take out the screen that's in the MAF. That way you will be able to get a nice thorough cleaning for it. Use a flat tip screwdriver or needle nose pliers to remove the retaining ring and the screen will come out very easily. Do not damage the ring, and put the screen back in, because you ma notice driveability issues.

 

ok bro thanks for the help, and the rest of the guys

 

I asked one of the tech guys at the dealership about cleaning it and he said that I shouldn't use anything and that it will go through a clean or burn off cycle for the wires. Sounded good to me. Just thought that I would throw this out there to see if he was feeding me a line or if anybody else had heard this.

 

One more thing before you go on. Just a bit more detail to help you out.

The sensor splits into three parts. The two ends and the sensor unit. The sensor is the black plastic part.

If you look at it as air would flow through it, there are three sets of parallel metal bars that run vertically. On these bars, there are three resistors (Or diodes?) spot welded on horizontally, connecting the bars.

When you rub the gunk off, you don't need to apply any pressure at all. It rubs off very easily, but it really wouldn't go anywhere without physical contact since it is very gunky. It actually does look like fried filter oil, since it is so oily and gummy. When I sprayed it with contact cleaner, it wouldn't do anything. It just got wet and then dried.