Varnish like gunk in Air Mass Meter

[falconsprint]

1989 560SEL

I've seperated the air duct housing (rubber boot) from the air mass meter in order to replace it. Upon dissasembly I've found that everything is coated with a wet varnish like gunk. I assume this is old gasoline. Is this normal or is the fuel distributor leaking? The car has 142,000 miles and is running fine. With that many miles I didn't expect it to be clean inside but I want to check with the forum if it is normal to find this.

I'm going to clean the air mass meter with carb cleaner before installing a new air duct housing and flange.

Thanks
~Dave

[sbourg]

This surprised me the first time I disassembled the throttle body of my late Acura (MPI). However, organic vapors are pretty omnipresent in the airflow path, due to such as vapor-return circuits, etc. If you didn't find fuel pooled in the plenum of the airflow meter, I would just clean and forget. If you are replacing the fuel distributor anyway, then there is no issue.

Steve