Pull the hose on your Air Mass Meter and see if it is oily inside - dollar-to-a-donut there is oil depositing on the air mass meter. The air mass meter works kind of like wetting your finger and sticking it in the air to see how much the wind is blowing. It has a heated element and it measures air movement by how fast it loses heat (the more air, the more heat is dissipated). If it is coated with oil, its not going to have the same reaction to incoming air, and the front O2 is picking up that the fuel trim doesn't yield a mixture ratio that is consistent with the air mass meaured. Let me know if your air mass is oily inside.

Nobody has ever posted about "dirty connector."

This is a hot wire MAF and the cleaning is of that wire, which is internal to the unit. This unit measures density/volume of incoming air by calculating how much that air cools the hot wire.

All very interesting, of course, because this cleaning isn't going to work in any event.

All of the measurements and for that matter the establishment of air density and flow over the element are based soley on very slight voltage variations seen by the control unit. ANY single or multiple instances that can effect the current flow will have the ability to alter the factors that establish the air mass
traveling through the assembly...... so a corroded connection caused by disimelar materials being in contact in a varying environment can alter the readings seen by the control unit.
Bill

I am equally skeptical about the connector theory, and I don't recall ever hearing about that before. For the record, these AMMs are thin-film type, not hot wire (I believe). Some people have reported success with cleaning, but not very many. I tried, and it did.... nothing.

LOL. Probably not, but I don't see the harm in trying. Like I said originally, the car drives just fine. If I didn't have an impending state inspection I'd just keep driving it as-is. If cleaning the sensor works long enough to drive to the inspection station then I have all the time in the world to noodle it over or save up money for parts and tools.

David

I still have not purchased a new MAF. There was a problem locating the special flexible hose clamp pliers (one source kept telling me they'd have it the next day, and the next, and the next).

So I still want to buy the part here to support you guys, but I'm not going to pay an extra $200 for it. I can buy it locally for $266. Show me where I can get it "here" for anything close to that.

You can call Phil and see what he can do.