Vehicle: 2000 GP with 3.8L, auto with 85K mileage
Problem: Wife's car, was running fine. While I was driving it to work last week, I noticed the RPM dropped off rapidly a couple of times when I let off the accelerator to slow or stop (sudden dip then return to normal). It only happened twice in 5 round trips (30 miles ea.) so I figured it was just an anomaly. Started it up one morning, idled fine, put in reverse, backed into street and it died. Wouldn’t start, it would cough and was spitting gas out of exhausts and the only way I could get it to run was fire it up around 3k RPM. Would not idle. This condition lasted 2-3 days. Neighbor put his diag. reader on and it showed a dirty MAF sensor. Bought a can of CRC MAF cleaner, took it off, cleaned it, replaced it and it started right up. Drove it around a bit and all seemed ok. Drove it to work the next day and ran fine other than one instance of RPM dipping. Started it up to go to work yesterday and it started fine, idled about 2 minutes and died. Back to same symptoms. Coughs, bangs and dumping gas. So any suggestions before I start the expensive parts swap or equally expensive trip to the shop? I will clean the MAF again, but the resistor looked fine (light gray) when I cleaned it and there really didn’t seem to be any obvious fuzz or gunk. Should I start with the MAF or is there something else I need to check and can test?
Thanks
Thaine
.... definitely a bad maf from the sounds of it... I was lucky when my stock maf failed and it failed by the frequency dropping to 0 every once in a while. and the car just fell back on the map sensor....
