Mechanicman

Hey everyone,

This is my first post so I thought I would just jump right in and say hi and ask a question right off the bat I am a Journeyman Automotive Tech here in British Columbia Canada. I completed 3 out of 4 years of my apprenticeship at a Chevy dealer here but have been working at an aftermarket shop for the past while and ran into an interesting problem with an s10 and thought I would share the story. A 2001 chevy s-10 4.3L V6 came in that was running rough at idle and slow parking lot speeds but good at above 50 kmh. Had check engine light on and scanned with p0101 and p0300. I checked the misfire data first and could not confirm a misfire on any cylinder so I moved on to the MAF sensor code assuming it was responsible for my random misfire code. During my visual inspection I found that the intake collar (small rubber boot from the air filter housing to MAF sensor) had a tear in it and looked like it was almost being sucked into the engine. Once I removed it and inspected the MAF sensor and found the honeycomb screen cracked right down the middle and bent toward the engine like it was about the be sucked into the engine. I had never seen this before, but have heard about it actually happening on BMWs causing all kinds of engine problems. Anyways. I replaced the torn boot and the MAF sensor and this fixed the problem but my question is....does anyone know why this would happen? I am drawing a blank in my search and even my Chevy tech buddies have not seen this. From my research this can be a common thing with other manufacturers but nothing comes up on a net search about chevys.... anyways I thought I would throw it out there and see if anyone here may have seen it before.

Thanks...and I look forward to posting more in the future!