i made the mistake of over oiling my air filter, and now my tahoe has a hard time staying at a steady idle. it wants to die when i come to a stop at red lights. i also have a hard time to get it to start in the morning also. i have dried the excess off now, but i need to know what else to do. thanks for any help!

 

Try spraying carburetor cleaner in the MAF sensor, there is an element inside there that gets coked (coated with burned on oil), the filament heats up every time the vehicle is started to burn away any pollen, dust or bug debris but the oil just builds up and coats this filament when heated.

If this doesn't work then you will need to replace the MAF.

 

Is it an urban legend that this can happen even with a properly oiled filter?

 

I had to ask around to get any insight into this matter, what I have found is that:
The general consensus amongst GM engineers is that the oil mist from such a filter can contaminate the MAF filament and that causes an excessive amount of other contaminates to adhere to the filament and render it ineffective in an unusually short amount of time, in short the more oil on the filter the faster the MAF is ruined.

During warranty work record claims involving MAF sensors over the past 10 years have proven that more times than not when a MAF has needed replacement it was due to excessive contamination and coking on the filament caused by filter oil.

GM estimates that fewer than 5% of the vehicles it sells actually wind up with an oiled element filter installed but over 50% of the bad MAF's (on vehicles still under the 3/36 factory warranty) came out of vehicles with oiled element filters so I would say that there is some merit to GM's claim that the use of any oiled filter elements should be avoided but they will not void any part of the factory warranty if you choose to use one.