Hi Rusty,
I now have a 97 GTI 8V (after parting with my beloved 94 GTI Colour Concept) and my issue was jerking when the car was underload, i.e - putting your foot down. You couldnt really tell at lower speeds but when doing above 65 you could really tell!!! The car was no fun to drive and it was begining to jerk me right off.
To begin with i did the following:-
- Redex Treatment
- New Air Filter
- New Fuel filter
- Took apart throttle body and cleaned it along with the breather pipes and the manifold
- New Sparks and leads
- Fuel pump and ECU relays
However no change!!!
As the above were fairly cheap to do it was best to eliminate those first. By this time i had really had it, and i sent it to my local mechanic to put it on the diagnostics machine? He told me that it came up with a lambda sensor fault code. He then advised it have the mass air flow meter changed as this may be the problem. I enquired about mass air flow meters at my local v dub dealership and euro car parts but it was too expensive. However there were some fairly cheap ones on ebay.
My mates who is a petrol head and has a beautiful split screen camper van, porsche turbo s, ducati monstor, fireblade, r1, etc advised me to clean the sensor on the mass air flow meter and he kindly invited me round and cleaned it for me.
He basically unscrewed the maf sensor (its a squarish black device by Hitachi that is screwed ontop of the maf with studded tork screws) took it off the maf and showed me the wires (which are the sensors) and said that they should be silver in colour but they were both black, due to amount of muck sucked through.
He then cleaned the sensor wires and base of sensor with maplins circuit board cleaner and left it to dry for a few minutes. The pressure of the spray actually took all the muck off. When the cleaner dried off you could clearly see the difference in colour, they were now silver as they should be..
Then went for a drive and OMG the car was not the same!
The car was so much more responsive, you could tell straight away. I then proceeded to take it over 65, then 70, 80 and man there was no jerking at all!!!
After all i had done it was just a sensor that needed cleaning!!! Howevver all that i did previous to this is obviously a good thing anyway and iam glad i didnt get rid of it.
Stuart the petrol head said he suspected this was the issue and boy was he right! He was right on the button! Stu u beauty!!! And peeps i kid you not the car has never been better.
Hope this helps for you guys who are having jerking issues.
