Mass Air Flow Sensor
 

So after a crazy debacle with my Mass Air Flow and Check Engine Light (will explain) the Lexus dealer I bought my baby from agreed to pay for a new one and installation. Phew! About $400 work out of their markup and essentially right into my car.

Too bad that air flow sensor is just another government mandate, although it will help my gas mileage/fuel timing/performance/power slightly, yeah?

So here's the story: check engine light came on, went off, came on, etc. My friends are like it's a sensor, yup, they were right.

I bought a replacement from ************************************************************, and they have been helpful since they sent me the wrong part. But they sent me a 996 MAF. Those were used on the earliest boxsters but not on 2001s and later (so the Porsche parts guys tell me.) But they wanted $500 for this guy.

Anyway, I had a shop that diagnosed the problem as the MAF already and decided not to deal with it until I needed to emission test the car.

Now I need to smog it to get it registered, BUT, the dealer agreed to pay my guy for the work since it still beats Porsche's price by over $100.

If you're like me and bought your Boxster sight unseen no PPI (do NOT recommend, just reserve the car THEN send someone to do the PPI for you, it will be worth it just for what you can negotiate off the price!), I did my PPI post-purchase but still managed to wrangle help with the MAF so they can wash their hands of me.

Woot!

GAT

Nice rant stuffed in there.

The MAF wasn't mandated by any gov't agency, so your rant is based on false pretenses.

The MAF was created by an engine company to be able to better control fuel injection parameters. This allows the ECU to know how much air is going into the engine, so that it can make adjustments to the fuel mixture, so that it can then inject an appropriate amount of fuel for the current engine demand.

Not only does this give you more power for ever changing conditions, but can also reduce emissions during low demand situations. An engine doesn't need to get as much fuel at 6500 rpms going down a hill with the throttle closed as it does when its climbing up that hill.

Without that MAF sensor, your engine would want to dump in way more fuel than needed, or would have to use some other way to tell that its a low load situation, and you would have a different sensor doing the same job.

I think you should be more upset at the cost of the part.
When it comes out of your pocket next time, you will be even less pleased with the situation. Lots of other MAF sensors for other vehicles that do exactly the same function, that cost just a fraction of the money.

What you should do is figure out a way to test MAF sensors, and find one that responds exactly the same way as the Porsche one does, and make an install kit for it, and then you can be the one to rake in the cash when everyone's sensors goes bad.

BC.