skassamali

My problem is I've only had the car a few months, so what I consider normal (the only way I've known the car to drive), may not be normal.

Idle is fine. Some on this forum consider this as routine maint?

What symptoms would I see?

Lust4Lexus

Skassamali,

I would like to applaud you for taking the initiative to maintain your car. However, please let me reiterate that I mean you no disrespect, but if you cannot identify what the mass air flow sensor element is in the above picture, step away from the car. I mean not to assume that you have no technical knowledge, but judging by that question I think you are going to get yourself into trouble, and the LS engine is the last place you want to "learn" on. Every little part on this car is pretty expensive.

Now I myself am no certified ASE tech, but I learned my way around underneith a hood with my previous car, a Nissan Maxima with the help of some other, more knowledgable forum friends at meets. Basically, I had babysitters that made sure I had proper "technique", and I learned to do basic maintanence thanks to them. Maybe If there is a forum member that may around your area, they may be willing to assist you.

Lust4Lexus

I understand it can be difficult to establish a baseline for behavior when you are not the original owner of a car. I too have often wondered if my car was normal or not.. I think for routine maintenance, it should be done anyway, but these cars are built so well, that sometimes, routine maintenance shows little improvement, like it does on other cars, if you can understand what I'm saying. My car drives amazing, but I've never done anything maintenance wise that has made a night and day difference.

skassamali

I'm in the Austin area. Anyone willing to teach, I'm up for learning . Lunch included .

danxp

did the maf sensor cleaning and the throttle body cleaning... makes a world of difference... my main issue since i had the car was that whenever i would hit the gas, there would always be a slight delay before anything happened... that delay is now gone... i'm so pleased... special thanks to seattlegs for posting the original diy as referenced in this thread... there are some minor differences between the gs and the ls for this diy, but it's pretty easy to figure out... i highly recommend doing this if you haven't done this in a while...

curiousB

placebo effect

skassamali

hmm. So some have no difference, some have a world of a difference, and some end up having more problems than they started with. I don't really have any hesitation...my only issue is the fast shifting transmission which I understand is an effort to get higher gas mileage.

danxp

i'm the biggest skeptic there is... so um nope... feels like a totally different car now...

Boomer01

I cleaned the MAF and throttle body this weekend. As others have said, it doesn't take a long time if you know what you are doing. I really learned along the way, but here is the step-by-step process I did with pictures.

1) Remove the plastic engine cover (2 bolts)

2) Remove the MAF connector on top of the air filter box (one clip)


3) Remove the hose from the back of the air filter box (2 phillips screws)


4) Loosen the metal clamp on the air intake tube next to the air filter box (1 phillips screw)


5) Unclip the metal clips which hold on the air filter box top and remove the top from the intake tube. (4 metal clips)


6) Spray the inside of the air filter box lid with the MAF sensor cleaner, wipe down, and sit to dry. It should not look dirty. This is a picture before I cleaned it.


7) Remove the air intake tube and attached box. Remove the two hoses attached to the box and remove the bolt on the passenger side of the box (mine was missing). Next loosen the metal clamp attaching the intake tube and the throttle body and wiggle until you can remove the intake tube and box.



8) Clean the throttle body. I used carb cleaner because I had it laying around but you can buy throttle body cleaner. Spray the throttle body and wipe. Repeat until you see no more black on a rag. To clean inside the butterfly valve, spray a rag and push open the valve and wipe. I also removed the 2 nuts and 2 bolts connecting the throttle body to the engine and pulled it out to allow myself access from the rear. I didn't bother disconnecting the hoses from the throttle body because they were hard to remove. I spent a good 10-15 minutes cleaning it because of how dirty it was.
Before:

After:


9) Put everything back together in reverse order.

I also removed the battery connections during this process. I cleaned most of the engine bay as well. Overall it probably took 1 hour. When I started my engine, it was idling at 1000 rpm, now it idles around 800 rpm. When I first put everything together and started it, it idled high and sounded a little funny, but after a drive around the block everything went back to normal.

danxp

thanks for putting up the diy... i was about to do it myself, but you beat me to it...

a couple of notes i will add tho...
- it's much much easier to remove the maf sensor by unscrewing the 2 philips heads and then going at it out of the housing...

for those that are really curious to see the effects of each i would first clean the maf sensor... then put everything back and drive the car and see the effects... next i would proceed with the throttle body cleaning as described previously...

this way you could figure out what each cleaning did, that is, if you're curious... i cleaned both in one session so i don't know which contributed more to the better performance...

skassamali

My car idles fine and there is no hesitation upon acceleration. Any other symptoms? The car is 6 years old with 70k miles on the odo.

Marklouis

The MAF sensor is in direct contact with the airflow - including humidity/moisture/acid content that comes along with it. that's the stuff you can't really "see" on the MAF sensor but after 30k miles or 3 years it does have an effect on the sensor even though you may not ever notice over time - so regular cleaning of that component is a good item to add to your maintanance schedule. you can clean it everytime you replace your air filter.

skassamali

Turned out to be a relatively easy procedure with Boomer's pics. The TB was surprisingly clean for a car of this age. I still went ahead and wiped it down. The car is a bit peppier on the gas pedal now. This would've been an hour procedure had I not dropped my 10mm socket down into the engine bay. Ended up jacking up the car, removing the wheel, and using this magnetic extension rod thing to fish the socket out.

I think my brake fluid is finally red so I think I'm done with that maintenance item too. Anything else I can do ?

danxp

just checking, but did you push the top part of the butterfly valve to expose the other side? that's the part that would be very very dirty... what you see in boomer's picture doesn't show the other side of that valve... that's the part that'll make you reach and go through many rags...

skassamali

Son of a....I flipped it a couple of times but didn't spend too much time on it since the front side looked clean. So you just held the butterfly valve open and cleaned the other side of that valve (the side that face the inside of engine block)?