DO NOT spray, spill, or otherwise flood the MAP sensor, Yes, I said flood, with any type of cleaner or solvent. You will likely destroy it. Don't even spray it with water.

There are very small vent holes on top of this sensor. If you get anything in them it will keep the sensor from working right if at all. (The GM OEM sensor has 2 vents. Some after market ones have one vent. The GM vent holes are not obvious eihter.)

I was cleaning my engine over the weekend and accidently sprayed gunk engine brite on the MAP. This morning the car gave me all sorts of grief untill shoved the spare MAP I had on.

At lunch I stuck the old one on just to make sure and the car would barely start then die. Swap the MAP back to the spare and it runs fine.

Lesson:
MAP is not water proof.

The way it failed was to die when I hit the gas. This is logical because the MAP output is used to calculate vacuum advance for the ignition. Screwy MAP, screwy Timing.

Once it started this the sensor was dead. This sensor cannot be cleaned or repaired. Only replaced.

Good stuff to know! I like to keep my engine real clean, and I have been lucky so far that cleaning it has not caused any problems. In the future, I will take extra precautions and wrap the MAP with some saran wrap before I squirt the motor down. Thanks for the tip!!

Mike

Thanks Ogre! It's knowing these little things that help keep us on the road!

Aargh! Why couldn't I have found this post a week ago! I just had GM do over $800 worth of work trying to figure out what was up with my GT. They replaced the distrubtor, cap and rotor, plugwires, & did the sparkplugs, and the car still wouldn't run worth a darn. I took it back to them and they then said that it was a faulty ignition module, paid for that and it ran good for about 50 kilometers and then started to act up again. I took it in again and told them that I'm getting really pissed at them and told them that it must be something computer related, and to check the codes. The mechanic said he did check the codes and it read that the MAP sensor code was triggered but he said that it was not a current code and to ignore it. I'm going to call them first thing in the morning and tell them to change the MAP and see if that works, and then I'm going to go talk to service manager and tell him about my unpleasant and expensive visit to their dealership. This whole thing makes sense as I just waxed my car last week and ran the hose over my engine before I started to detail it. Hmmph

Well, since my earlier post, I took the dead MAP and ripped it's little guts out. Was very interesting. I definatly did get cleaner into it. The car didn't even run with it on. I'm going to save it and I'll try to remember to bring it if I go to carlisle.

I'm not exactly sure why it's dead. I'm guessing the chemicals reacted with something. hardly any got in.

The guts weren't what I expected. It's some kind of pressure transducer not a mechanical thing. I'm guessing something with a strain gauge. I can't take the transducer apart.... the top is glass or ceramic.

Loafer,,,,
reset the ECM and then give it a day or so. If there's a code in the ECM it will run like a turd.

Go over the whole motor and do the simple. Check all the gound wire anchors. Check that vac lines are tight. (Clamp the PCV valve line to the manifold. just tighten the clamp enough to ensure a seal. don't crush the line. it's real soft)

Also Disconect the 2 lines going to the vapor can. plug them at the engine ports. The vapor can will do some bizar things if it's bad or flooded with fuel/water.

Check the EGR solinoid..... if you got that messed up weird things have happen too.