I have a 2001 Grand Prix GTP. It has about 100,000 miles on it, bought it at 92,000 for about six grand, it was in really good condition, and it ran great, and has ever since I bought it.
I recently returned from a trip from St. Louis back to Chicago, and I had my oil changed at Jiffy Lube. Car was fine, hardly drove it in the next two days, then I went and got gas at a BP station, premium like always, but in retrospect, I realized they were filling the underground tanks.
About 2 minutes after leaving the station, she started stuttering, and I'm assuming it was some sort of misfiery thing. The SEL came on, and I managed to get the car home.
I had thought that maybe I had gotten water in the fuel system, so I let her sit, and started it up, and it promptly stalled out from idle. I started it up again, it ran rough for a while, then ran ok enough for me to run to Autozone to pick up a bottle of Heet, thinking that would fix the water problem. I also had them pull the SEL code, and it was something about the MAF sensor. Lean MAF something or other. So I also picked up a bottle of MAF cleaner and the Torx bits.
The Heet did little to nothing, so I pulled the MAF and sprayed it down. I promptly replaced it, where the car died on me. I got it running and it was horribly stuttery and jerky. I had assumed that if it was the MAF sensor, cleaning it would fix it... So I pulled the connector, and lo and behold, the car runs rough at idle, but she's fine other than that.
Sorry for the horribly long post, but should I just bite it and buy another MAF sensor to replace it? And if so, aftermarket, or OEM? Does it matter even?
