Your car’s mass airflow sensor is a vital part of your car’s engine. When it fails, it can cause a lot of havoc for your car. Brown Automotive has these tips to help you to recognize when your car’s mass airflow sensor is having trouble.
Problems When Accelerating
When the mass airflow sensor isn’t doing its job, you’re going to notice it during acceleration. Your car’s onboard computer, the ECM, doesn’t have the information that it needs in order to properly calibrate the fuel to air mixture in the car’s engine. That’s going to lead to combustion issues, and that translates to no power when you need it.
Rough Idling
Problems with the mass airflow sensor mean that the combustion process is a little bit off in your car’s engine. That leaves you with a rough idle, which can be pretty obvious when the situation gets bad enough. There can be a few reasons for this but checking the mass airflow sensor is a good start.
Trouble Starting the Car
Everything needs to be just right for your car’s engine to kick over and start running. That means that the battery needs to have enough juice and the fuel to air mixture needs to be correct as well. If that mix is off because the mass airflow sensor can’t do its job, that means you’re experiencing harder starts than usual.
Excessive Exhaust Smoke
You might notice that you’re seeing more exhaust smoke than usual, too. If that exhaust smoke is dark or even black, that can mean that there’s more fuel in the mix than there should be. When it doesn’t all burn off in the engine, the residual fuel gets sent through the exhaust system and you end up with black exhaust smoke.
Bad Gas Mileage
You probably guessed already that one of the symptoms of problems with your car’s mass airflow sensor can be poor gas mileage. That’s because fuel isn’t being utilized efficiently by your car’s engine and that shows in your ultimate mileage counts. If you don’t already track your gas mileage, you might want to simply because this one symptom can help you to find a variety of issues in your car.
Check Engine Light
As always, the check engine light is your ultimate notice that there is a big problem somewhere. It’s vital that you heed the warning that the check engine light offers to you. You may not know exactly what is wrong, but when you see that light, there definitely is something happening that affects engine performance.
Any time you’re noticing problems with your car’s performance or engine, give us a call at Brown Automotive in Trussville, AL. We’ll be happy to diagnose the problem for you right away.