No oomph!

[stvpug1]

I've spent 2 hours this morning on it:- First i checked air filter, looked OK, but i had one in the garage so fitted it - didn't make a jot of difference. Then decided to unplug the MAF sensor - didn't make any difference at tick over - but did flag up engine management light so I've proved fault monitoring hasn't been disabled. Took her for a run, will only rev up to 2k revs, I take it defaulted into "limp mode". A bit disappointed at this stage as i'd read some posts which indicated if you disconnect a faulty MAF sensor the car will run better but may blow smoke because its not in full control of mixture. OK - I removed MAF sensor to find steel gauze protecting sensor filaments was blocked totally in the center portion "got to be the problem"! cleaned with solvent cleaner left to dry and replaced. I'm expecting great things now. The car does seem a little better at higher revs but still nothing low down!!
Doubly disappointed!!!
Engine management light went out after several restarts (at least something seems to be going right) . Now tried removing vacuum hose off EGR valve - no EM light fault but also no improvement. So I've pretty much exhausted all my ideas apart from starting to look at the turbo. As a last try decided to remove MAF from Mrs's saloon and try on mine.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE, looks like it was this all along!!!!! OK its not a rocket ship, but i don't have to plan my gear changes when i go up steep hills now. Put the duff MAF on the saloon and guess what thats exactly the same as mine was - i.e. no low down turbo just a bit at 2500 to 3500 revs. Will try a bit more cleaning to see if i can revive it. My question is why didn't the fault light come up until i disconnected it? Anyway I hope this helps you 'MJB' good chance its the same fault.

[rwb]

Result!

As I understand it, error codes are flagged when a sensor reports a value outside of set tolerances. So, if the values being reported are wrong but inside the tolerances then, erroneously, no error will be flagged.

mjb: that's just the error message that you get on the MFD when summat's up. It can, and does, literally mean anything.

[mjb]

Excellent news stvpug!

£72 for a new one from Euro Car Parts though - a bit steep to go trying randomly. Anyone got any ideas on how to test it?

[stvpug1]

No luck trying to revive, have had a really close look inside, looks as if thin platinum elements are damaged - removed the top off the connector plug connection to find small pcb containing surface mount components, and filled some form of protecting gel - don't think this is any way fixable!! don't fancy spending £70 - £90 pounds on a new one, probably try one from a local scrapper now i know its definitely this.