Well I have searched for a solid week through these forums for a detailed break down of getting to and cleaning the throttle body and MAF, and have not found what I am looking for. Only found people saying to do it. Obviously its simple enough to not have been posted but I am not the wisest nor a mechanic and would like some specific help.

The issue I had was my car was always idling low like most people who have posted, so I thought I would take care of this. The other night the car almost died and my Check engine light came on. Figure it kicked on cause the low idle and almost dieing made a air flow problem. So I just wanted to know how to clean this and then I was going to unhook my negative cable to the battery and reset the car and hopefully increase the idle and get rid of the check engine light.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you much.

 

The MAF sensor is on the black accordion intake hose its a small square black piece held down by 2 screws with wires coming out the side. Just remove the 2 screws and unclip the wire and pull out. Wipe down the outside and CAREFULLY take some tissue or a q-tip and wipe the brown bulb on a wire down. Then buy some MAF cleaner and spray down the hole where there are 2 thin wires and let dry. Then put it all back together. The throttle body is behind the black accordion tube its a large gray square piece. I bought a can of throttle body cleaner from Autozone for literally a penny. I think a mess up on their computer lol but I hosed mine down and wiped it clean it was horribly dirty. Anyways good luck hope thats the information you needed.

 

Here is a DIY I made for cleaning the MAF:
https://www.rx8club.com/showpost.php...71&postcount=9

 

Hey thanks guys, now i can clean that MAF up, anyone know if there is a DIY for the throttle body cleaning, Ill just hop in and see if I can take care of it i suppose. I was told that most new car's throttle body are not accessible.

 

ours is very accessible

 

Pretty easy:
1) Remove accordion tube
2) Spray carb cleaner onto rag/shop towel
3) Open throttle body valve with finger and wipe away.
4) Optional: I remove the four bolts attaching the TB to the upper intake manifold so I can get behind the TB and wipe it better. No need to remove the coolant lines going to it.

 

can i use engine starting fluid to clean the MAF? or will that contain dome oil base. its what i have on hand. if not i can take the trip to the store

 

No, buy MAF cleaner.

 

 

only if you want to mess up your MAF sensor.

 

lol, well google said so... lolol thought id throw the question out there.. lol im sure someone had the same question some where out there..

 

Kind of a related question. The screws that my MAF attaches to the intake with have stripped the threads out of the intake. I have the factory intake, so the threads are shizzy plastic. I guess I tightened the screws too tight or something.

I've searched the forums a lot and this is the closest thread I could find.

Any solutions to repairing the threads? Is there an aluminum aftermarket piece I could get? (Without spending $400+ on a complete intake.)

 

IIRC I thought there were metal threaded inserts placed in the plastic housing and the plastic housing itself was not threaded? Anyhow, you should look into getting some proper size threaded inserts to use in place of the stripped ones if the threads are plastic and stripped. If they are, I would suggest making the hole equal or a tad smaller than the threaded insert (make sure it's the right depth), apply proper Loctite or Araldite glue around the outside of the insert to bond with the plastic housing and insert it into place. Read the glue/epoxy directions on what you go with but generally give it 12 hours before using.

If the threads were indeed metal (as in threaded inserts were originally used), then I would look into tapping them to the relevant size so you can use a helicoil of right size that works with the screw.

 

quick question, could there maybe be a picture where the throttle body is? definitely a retard question, but my IQ points are quickly going out the window with the more alcohol i drink...

 

In the link I provided above in post #3 you'll see a pic showing the location of the MAF.
The TB is the component after the black accordion tube.

 

okay. thanks!

 

I need help, my RX8 does not idle after start, this started after cleaning the engine.

 

Just cleaned my air intake filter (sr performance CAI with K&N filter) put it all back together drove 20 miles and the car suddenly died, every since it will start like a dream but instantly dies when warm, when cold it will start up and idle but very very rough and just on the cusp of dying if it dosent die. check all visible vacuum hoses removed entire intake checked the accordion for cracks, MAF looks clean, dont have cleaner on hand but has no visible oil build up at all. haven't checked coils yet but i dont think thats the problem since the car starts amazing. i also checked the ESS and thats clean too. really need help the car only has 18k miles and its a 2007 ran flawless up until i cleaned the filter. anyone have a any common vacuum lines to check or common air leak ares as i thinks its an air leak problem as the cars exhaust smells very rich and its backfiring like a MF! any help is appreciated.

 

You cleaned the filter with oil? I know the MAF may not look oily, but given the circumstances, that's really the only thing you changed right?
I'd get the stock intake back on there. Few intakes perform better than stock and SR is not among them. By contrast, intakes like the SR lack airflow straighteners necessary for the MAF to work well.

 

Dont have the stock intake i bought it with the sr already installed, would not be my number one choice of short ram air but it is what it is. i got the car to idle today by doing the battery disconnect and 20 pump method letting it idle from cold for 15-20 min but it still runs and idle shaky under 3k rpm above that is pretty smooth. Do you think the ecu just need more time to learn the fueling again and it will smooth out? ordered a really nice obd2 scanner so i will be able to check live data values like some other members of this thread have recommended.

 

His car ran perfect with that same intake until he cleaned the air filter. Half the problem with these threads is people not using their head. It didn’t have an air straightener before, so how is that suddenly a problem now? It only has a small effect on idle stability best case any way, not significant on an NA engine, or at least not a known, significant factor on this particular intake.

If it ran fine before then the most reasonable idea is that you over-oiled the filter, next is that you didn’t put something back together properly or damaged something in the process. There’s really nothing much to mess up since it uses the OE accordion tube. Damaging the MAF or MAF plug wiring, or getting oil on the MAF, or having a leak at or after the MAF are about all that can go wrong in that R&R process, but I wasn’t there and can’t be sure of what you did or messed with exactly.

Mazda RX8 Cold Air Intake System. Mazda RX-8 Horsepower Performance Parts.

Are the MAF and TB wiring harness connectors inserted fully? You probably didn’t mess with the TB though, just being sure. A bad MAF or TB could cause this behavior, but if they only have 18k miles use seems unlikely. Any bare/exposed wires on the MAF? Is the O-ring seal on the MAF and not cracked/damaged?

However, it ran fine after you put it back together and 20 minutes driving later quit. So it seems like you had it back together fine and then something happened. Go buy some MAF cleaner. In addition to cleaning the MAF, with the engine idling you can spray it around the intake joints/sealing points to try and find a leak; the engine rpms will increase when it gets sucked in through a leak.

If all else fails, ypu could just be unlucky and another unrelated problem coincidently arose after the intake cleaning. You just have to methodically start and progress through all the logical steps first.



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Team, relax. The comment about replacing the intake was clearly a general recommendation not a solution to this problem.

 

How severe can idle or power lose get from a bad maf or TB ? My 8 barely moves on it's own power (flat ground) and unsure of idle because I havent ran the engine more than 20 mins. (It's fresh rebuild)

 

Are you tone deaf to yourself? What’s clear is that this person needs help fixing a specific problem, not sidetracking him with irrelevant general recommendations. I also don’t need to relax any more than I need to be commanded like either your dog or your child. Maybe you should have barked that command to yourself instead. He’s pretty much getting run in circles in the other thread this was cross-posted in.

 

Thank you Team and others for the help it was a combination of issues falling back on poor intake design, my own incompetence and, shear bad luck lol. first problem was the front clamp on the accordion had leaked severely and barely had any clamping pressure around the intake so i had to wrap 1/8 inch worth of electrician tape around the intake piping where it slides under the accordion to make a good seal, this fixed it for about 5 minutes lol then it was back to crap. after that it wouldn't even start so i got all excited just to be disappointed so before i got to po'd i went to bed. the next day i continued with diagnostics, i searched all vacuum lines because i thought it was a vacuum leak all along and ended up finding a melted hose that was a part of the vacuum line to the VFAD which the previous owner did not take out for some reason after removing stock air box, so i promptly removed that system all together and plugged the port on the intake manifold. the car still wasn't running perfect so i continued looking and eventually came across another leak with the accordion tube this time at the clamp on the TB side so i did a rudimentary patch job on that end of accordion and the car finally ran normally gain after all the air leaks where fixed, long story short i ended up ordering an AEM CAI to just completely eliminate that accordion and that will be the end of that, thank you again for help and suggestions and even tho it did not end up being something more serious i got to dig into the motor a little and learn how to diagnose and test for basically all the common issues so i came out better prepared anyway!