MAF Housing

[RobM]

While fitting a new air box yesterday I noticed the MAF has a plastic grid like cover over each end. Is there any merit to removing this? Or is it likely to cause more problems that it's worth?

It just seems more of an obstruction than the insides of the airbox. But I don't want to screw up my MAF by removing bits I really shouldn't!

Any advice would be appreciated

Rob

 

[Mitchy]

I ''think'' its there to straighten or guide the airflow to get an accurate airflow reading. Along with this reading, and the reading from the lambda the ecu then works out how lean/rich the mixture is and compensates.

I believe if you take the mesh off, you mess up the airflow readings and that may have an effect when ecu spots a lean/rich scenario and over compensates or worse, under compensates.

People that have removed it have seen silly high maf figures 225 g/s for example which are obviously innaccurate. If the maf is seeing more airflow at the meter, its going to add more fuel, if the injectors are adding more fuel your running a rich mixture and dampening the performance.

Its there for a reason, i dont know if the above is 100% true but thats what i personally think

 

[DPJ]

The mesh is there to produce laminar airflow so that the sensor will read accurately. Removing it will produce inaccurate readings.

 

[RobM]

Cool, that's all I need to know. Cheers guys

 

[Feel]

I de-screened a MAF - as you know it was the MAF that was attached to that very airbox Below are some of the FACTs I concluded.

It ran perfectly fine without the screens.

I got MAF readings of 195-210g/sec depending on day/weather (Stage 1, Green Panel and Smoothed box).

If a de-screened MAF reads high it'll be because of the increased cross sectional area, not due to the non-linear flow.

A/F Ratio looked fine the whole time I ran it.

Any benefit? Miniscule if any, althoug seemed to be more induction noise.

Would I do it again? No. Certainly not if I only had one MAF.

 

[RobM]

Feel, cheers. Good to know the 'other side' of the story, but if you say you wouldn't do it again if you only had one MAF then that kind of confirms my feeling that there is a possibility of doing some damage.

Think I'll leave it as-is

 

[DPJ]

I de-screened a MAF - as you know it was the MAF that was attached to that very airbox Below are some of the FACTs I concluded.

It ran perfectly fine without the screens.

I got MAF readings of 195-210g/sec depending on day/weather (Stage 1, Green Panel and Smoothed box).

If a de-screened MAF reads high it'll be because of the increased cross sectional area, not due to the non-linear flow.

A/F Ratio looked fine the whole time I ran it.

Any benefit? Miniscule if any, although seemed to be more induction noise.

Would I do it again? No. Certainly not if I only had one MAF.

Hi Phil, I hadn't forgotten you'd done this, or your conclusions.

The thing that troubles me is that now I've seen some pics of the inside of a Bosch MAF sensor, I get the feeling that descreening would potentially give a lower airflow rather than higher.

The more I research MAFs, the less I feel we know about them.

 

[RickC]

YOU CAN HOWEVER REMOVE THE METAL MESH AFTER THE MAF,

damn caps as the air has already been read

 

[DPJ]

YOU CAN HOWEVER REMOVE THE METAL MESH AFTER THE MAF,

damn caps as the air has already been read

None of the MAFs I've had have had any mesh at the TIP end.

 

[RobM]

My MAF doesn't have any metal mesh at the end, none that I saw anyway. Will probably be removing it again in a few days so will look again, but I'm sure there wasn't any there yesterday.

 

[RickC]

i have a S3 maf, local tuning place dealt with audi,

and we removed the metal mesh,

sure i removed some mesh on my old lcr maf too