Your car suffers (crying emoji)!
When a mass airflow sensor goes bad, your engine suffers a lot.
You might ignore the symptoms and extra costs. Or you might ignore it unknowingly as sometimes bad mass airflow sensor no check engine light happens.
Keep ignoring and on one fine morning, your car will refuse to roll even afoot.
And a standstill car takes a lot more to fix than a running one. So, brace yourself for the hole in your wallet.
Now, if you are conscious enough to care about your bad MAF sensor, then we’re here to help you out.
From here you’ll get to know about how you can detect a bad MAF Sensor with the check engine light and ways to fix it.
So, let’s sense our way right into the details-
Mass Air Flow Sensor Symptoms
A bad mass airflow sensor will give you many signs. The most common one is that your check engine light will lighten up.
We’re assuming that your check engine light isn’t working or isn’t telling you about the problem. And you’re suspecting that your MAF sensor is going bad. So, we’ll give you other symptoms to identify a bad MAF sensor.
The engine won’t Start Easily
What does a mass airflow sensor do?
It simply measures the amount of air entering the engine.
Now, that you know the work of a MAF sensor, we’ll explain why the engine disagrees to start.
- As the Engine Control Unit isn’t able to measure the airflow it simply guesses the amount.
- It uses all the other sensors to determine assumed data.
- This makes the engine starting process much more complicated.
In the case of older models, the car won’t start at all.
More Fuel Consumption
Based on the data of the MAF sensor, the ECU operates. So, when your ECU guesses the fuel amount, there is a high chance that your cylinders get flooded. As a result, you get a poor fuel economy.
Rough Engine Idle
As we’ve said before, the engine becomes clueless about the airflow during the MAF sensor failure.
So, the engine sometimes creates too lean a fuel mixture and sometimes floods the cylinders with fuel. As a result, you’ll get a rough engine idle.
Moreover, to add insult to injury, your engine will die occasionally while rough idling.
Engine Indecision Under Load and Acceleration
When you have a bad mass airflow sensor, your ECU makes a smart move to save your engine.
Here’s how it happens-
- You push to accelerate.
- ECU will sense this drop in the Engine vacuum at first.
- It will use the other sensors to decide whether more fuel is needed or not.
- This process takes 0.5 to 1.5 seconds.
Therefore, you get a time gap between your decision and the car’s execution.
This also happens while you try-
- Going uphill
- Towing
- To ask for more power from the engine.
Moreover, you’ll get the worst experience under wide-open throttle acceleration.
Testing Mass Air Flow Sensor
If one of the symptoms matches your current situation, then it’s time you became sure.
To diagnose a failing MAF sensor, you’ll need a couple of tools at first.
- OBD2 code reader
- Automotive diagnostic scanner
- Digital Multimeter
- Digital Oscilloscope
Go through the inspection methods and choose which you’ll follow. Based on the method, get the tool you need.
Visual Inspection
Here you won’t need any tools. But a keen eye is recommended. Check out these parts thoroughly:
- Wiring: Look for burnt, damaged or deteriorated areas in the MAF sensor wiring.
- Connector: Switch off the ignition key > unplug the MAF sensor harness connector > Check for terminal pins, loose connections, rust, etc.
- Internal Condition: Your Mass Air Flow sensor might report false values due to clogging or hot wire cavity.
Code Reading
If you found no problems through the visual inspection, then it’s time to move on.
So, you should try to find faults with the OBD2 code readers. Follow these steps for the code reading:
- Connect your code reader (follow the manual).
- Turn on the ignition key keeping your engine off.
- You’ll find the reader displaying error codes.
- Go through the manual to interpret those codes.
This is an easy step to bypass your car check engine light and determine a bad MAF sensor faster.
Electrical Tests
This is another method of testing a bad mass airflow sensor.
For this testing, you’ll need a digital multimeter.
So, let’s explore the testing options-
- Reference Voltage testing
- Ground Test
- Supply Voltage
As these methods are very complex, it’s better, if you learn these through seeing. So, search through YouTube to learn the testing process.
Testing the Check Engine light
Turn the ignition on while keeping the engine off. If the light doesn’t glow, then you may have a code or a faulty check engine light.
If the light comes on during the test, then you either have a test failure (2 consecutive failures to turn on the light) or a faulty code reader.
Fixing the Bad Mass Air Flow Sensor
There are two ways of fixing a mass airflow sensor failure. These are:
- Cleaning the MAF Sensor and
- Replacing the MAF Sensor
So we’ll start with the cleaning and if the cleaning seems like trouble to you then you can always change the MAF Sensor.
Cleaning
How to clean the mass airflow sensor?
It’s pretty tough to answer this in one line.
So, instead, we’ll explain the whole process.
With time the MAF loses its sensibility due to pollutant air. So, a cleaning might bring your sensor back to normal. Here are the steps:
- Remove the sensor from the vehicle
- Clean the hot wire sensors with extreme delicacy
- DO NOT use any acid, aggressive detergent or something similar on it.
- Get a Mass Air Flow Sensor Cleaner or biodegradable liquid soap.
- Clean with a cotton swab
Replacement
If cleaning-
- feels complex to you and
- Doesn’t fix your MAF Sensor
Then, you should replace it.
End Game
Blessings are not valued until they are gone. If your car has been running weird lately, you might want to check the airflow sensor.
A bad airflow sensor can cause problems with a wide range of engine functions and may not trigger any warning lights on your dashboard. It’s important to replace an old or damaged air mass sensor as soon as possible because it could lead to more expensive repairs in the future.
So, keep your MAF Sensor in check. Do not hesitate to fix it before your engine gets damaged.
