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clint

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  • Your Pathfinder Info
    1997 LE 4x4
  • Mechanical Skill Level
    Screwdriver Mechanic
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  • Year
    1987

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  1. I've got a '97 LE, and for the *first* time in the 7 years I've owned it, the engine started stalling. "Crap, I thought... this sounds like a sensor or electronic problem, better start tapping on connectors" The *first* tap was on the MAF Sensor and it killed the car instantly. I got lucky. I tried it several more times, and nearly each time, it killed the car. "Here is the problem". The Check Engine light came on, and I hooked up my newly-built OBD2<->USB interface (http://www.obddiag.net), and got the 0100 MAF error - that confirmed it. So now I had to figure out if it was the sensor or the connector, because when I'd clear the code and check the MAF data as the car was running, it would be just fine, until I tapped the sensor, killing the car, and the MAF data stream. So when the MAF was working, it was really working. What I had was a perfectly good sensor and an intermittent bad connection. After variously jiggling the connector vs. the sensor itself, I got a strong feeling the problem was in the sensor housing. This was confirmed by hooking an ohm-meter across pins 1&3 with the senor out of the car. It would read a relatively steady resistance until I'd tweak the sensor and it would go to infinity, showing an open connection. That proved to me that the sensor was good and it was an internal disconnect in the sensor housing. Astonished by the exorbitant MAF sensor prices, I thought to myself: "For $250 bones, this thing's worth trying to rescue" Using a screwdriver & heat gun at about 350 degrees F, I pried off the top, which of course popped off and broke the remaining two internal wires in the process. Fortunately for me, the wires were all broken at the housing and not on the circuit board, which was enclosed in a 1/8" layer of clear silicone gel "goo". It took me a bit to clean the icky silicone goo off the wires, and I was able to solder replacement jumpers into place. This job is not for the faint-of-heart. I could've destroyed the sensor with a slip of the hand at any moment. The soldering was really tough and the silicone goo gets everywhere. Liquid flux and relatively high heat helped. When I was done, I put the sensor back in the Pathfinder before gluing it and tested it. Voila! It worked! So I pulled the unit back out and used some superglue to glue the case back shut. BTW, I had to use some clear plastic (cut to size from some of that annoying clear clamshell packaging), and put it over the silicone gel to isolate my jumper wires from the circuit board below. Then I used some clear packing tape, face-to-face with wires in-between, to make sure the three wires don't ever cross - even with constant engine vibration. So now, despite all the tapping and jiggling of the connector, the stalling problem is gone. My Pathfinder is back, and I saved anywhere from $250 to $1250 depending on how it got fixed. So if it's your MAF sensor, check to see if it's not just a bad internal connection. The stock connections are very, and I mean VERY, fragile on the '97 Pathfinder sensors. Hard to believe such an expensive and important sensor would have such lousy connections on the inside. Also see this guy's video of a similar problem with the Maxima's: Good luck with yours!
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