Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Is It Really Safe To Clean The MAF?

I used B12 Chemtool...it says it leaves no residue..

Brian

For a light cleaning, you can leave the MAF on the car. Once you get the air box off it's pretty easy to pull the MAF anyway, so I usually pull it so I can see what I'm doing. There is no need to remove the sensor from the MAF body, and the screws are epoxied up to prevent removal.

When I tried it the epoxy was already cracked... under these conditions, pulling the sensor out of the MAF can be less work than pulling the MAF out of the intake plumbing, and you can do a better job of cleaning it (or breaking it, if you are so inclined).

I had a bottle I *borrowed* from my old job. It's an industrial item, so I'd try Digikey or another electronics warehouse type outfit that caters to hobbyists as well as commercial customers. I'll admit, in a pinch I used brake cleaner when I cleaned mine. As long as it is a no residue cleaner (NOT carb cleaner), you shoud be fine, but electronics cleaner is best.

Actually, removing the MAF sensor is not recommended. The electronics are trimmed once (rough) off the sensor housing, then trimmed again after being installed to the housing. The cal is done on a high accuracy flow bench. My understanding is that positional changes of the elements can affect the sensor readings. The epoxy is there to ensure that the part never moves once it is calibrated actively (and the cal is done after the anti-tamper epxoy is placed). There is a reason that the sensor elements are not available seperately.

Anyone ever use IPA on auto electronic connectors ?? When I worked at Apple, thats all I used to clean up the electrical connectors, remove solder flux etc from the boards.

At Intel now, thats what we use to clean machine parts during pm's/repair etc.

Can't see the harm in using it on auto electronics. Just my 2c.

IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) should work fine for the MAF elements. Surprised I hadn't thought of it myself. However, there are two problems with IPA that have minimized its use as an electronics cleaner.

1) It is a Volital (sp) Organic Compound and VOCs are naughty (or so say the environmental engineers). There are VOC free cleaners on the market now that clean as well as IPA and the "tree hugger" and ISO-14000 types love them.

2) IPA can react with some "no clean" fluxes (especially no clean RMAs used in solder reflow) and leave a residue. Of course, the flux used in the wave solder machines at Ford (not a process used on the MAF) is Alpha Metal's PF2, which is just 98% isopropyl alcohol and 2% adipic acid. Depends on the flux.

I cleaned mine with electronic parts cleaner I took from work. No residue, dries fast, and was free. We got boxes and boxes of the stuff. Nobody uses it.

Oh.

So I'm fugked, then.

My vote goes for brake cleaner; remove the housing from engine compartment, spray the sensor element and let dry overnight.