MAF - cleaning or replacing

[gavcradd]

After suffering from jerkiness for the past few months, this forum has been brilliant at pointing me towards the Air Flow Meter (MAF?) as the source of the problem - unplugging it took my Golf back to it's original glory, albeit with crap fuel economy.

My question now is, can I clean it out as some poeple have suggested, or do I simply need to get a new one?

I've attached 2 pictures of the offending bit...





A couple of questions...

1) Can I get into the MAF to clean it out? The star shaped bolts suggest I can't...
2) If I replaced it, do I replace the whole thing, ie the small black box and the large silver tube underneath?
3) Any suggestions on where to get one from and rough prices?

This forum has already been more use to me than any number of mechanics, anyone from here who's in the Stoke area, I owe you many many pints!!!

Gav

[Overseer]

yes its possible to clean the MAF.. there is info around here somewhere..

basically a MAF is two wires.. one cold, one "hot".. the car tries to keep the 'hot' one at a certain temp.. the air affects the cooling of this.. the resistance/difference between the two indicates air flow..
over time this gets dirty.. people have been saying they use contact cleaner to clean up the connectors..

pics of this operation would be very useful for this section!

[gavcradd]

I replaced my MAF yesterday after getting a second hand one from car transplants...With the amount of people suffering from this, I'd like to clean up my old one and see if it still works. I'd defo provide photos to help other people if someone would tell me how to clean it out!!!

So I've got the old one off here in my hand - I can't seem to get into the little black box because of the strange shaped bolts. I think I can see the two wires you're talking about, but they're behind a protective mesh.

Where from here? Try to open the black box, or try to take off the mesh?

[Overseer]

those strange bolts are just torex ones arent they?  if ya have a few toolkits / socket sets ya might find the bits amongst them..

both my 'toolkit' and a screw driver set i bought mostly for taking 'puter apart contain torex stuff


i have no experience of this.. just what i've read..

i'd assume taking the box apart would get me where i need