Leaderboard

After driving the Regal for about 3 weeks and a bit over 1000 miles I have had to do some "fine tuning". Started with an Idle Air Control, Then on to a Mass Air Flow sensor. Then yesterday I stopped in at Gibson's a local You Pick yard to get a back up battery. [This was after lunch with 2 Seater] Came out to the car and it wouldn't start. It would grind but not start. So I first checked fuel pressure, that was good. Then said to myself " Either Ignition Module or Crank Sensor". The obvious easy answer was to start with the ignition module. I know I was at Gibson's but I had a back up in the car [always carry extra parts and tools]. Had it swapped out in about 15 minutes. Hit the key and it started. I decided that I needed to do a tune up and checked my inventory of Reatta replacement parts. The Regal is a Series 2 so I knew the Delco upgrade I had done on the Reatta would give me pretty much what I needed. I checked online for spark plug wire length and plug number and checked what I had in inventory. Sure enough I had a wire set that was close in lengths and the correct number plugs [#14]. Called up Kendall [my mechanic friend] and invited myself over for a tune up party. Plugs and wires and clean up the plate under the ignition module. About an hour later the old original plug wires [in poor shape] and the old plugs [badly worn] were out and the new ones were in. Drive home was much better as the acceleration was noticeably improved.

I wonder how much it matters. RockAuto sells the MAF both ways. You can buy the complete assembly or just the sensor. I have changed just the sensor a couple of times without problems. My experience has been that they start out going bad by causing an erratic idle when you come to a stop with the transmission in gear. Cleaning didn't help but replacing it with a known good used one cured the problem. I never replaced the sensor and the throttle body as a unit. I have a friend who owns an auto parts store. He owned a big Buick with a 3800 back in the '90s. His MAF went bad often for some reason. When it went bad the motor would hardly run at all. We didn't know that the engine would run better if you unplugged the bad MAF. He carried a complete MAF unit and tools in the trunk. He would swap it out on the side of the road. He couldn't buy just he sensor without the throttle body from the warehouse he got his parts from. He was told that they were only sold as a calibrated unit like you mentioned

This is the MAF chart I received from GM Tuners many years ago. You can decide if it is discrete enough to require it to be pre calibrated. I can only speak personally about replacing MAF sensors, but I do not know of anyone that changes that entire assembly, despite what it says in the FSM. If you take apart the TB and MAF assemblies, there is almost no machining done after casting and the passages are as cast. I have run a couple dozen sensors on my flowbench just to get a sense of the range and if they are operational. The calibration, if there is any, consists of the sensor, the passageways, the laminar flow over the sensor and the ECM. This is the way I understand the system: The sensor has a heating element and a thermistor to read the temperature. The ECM sends a pulsed signal (probably ground) to maintain the target temperature to infer that actual mass of the air. The frequency listed in the chart is the pulse I am referring to. I am pretty sure the air temperature sensor in the air box is needed to precondition the required heating range. The MAF reading is used in combination with other inputs for the PROM to generate the LV8, or engine load figure, which is one axis of the main spark timing chart. It looks like this old chart won't open, darn it LN3 MAF chart.pdf

All these things have in common the BCM connector. They also have in common ground G103, which is attached to the cylinder head below the generator (alternator).

Glad to hear you're getting back into the game Ronnie! My BIL has a "fox" Mustang convertible. He likes it a lot. Also my first car was a '66 Mustang...

After long term inactivity and unknown storage conditions, the first thing I would check are the battery connections, ground and B+ connections inside the plastic boxes on the passengers fender and at the engine. Each of the battery cables consists of three terminals on the other end. Then move on to the ECM and BCM connections. Simply unplug and reconnect to get a new fresh connection, terminal spray cleaner optional. Lots of those items operate on lower than system voltage so connections are everything. Of course the wiring itself is subject to damage from vermin, but start with accessible connectors.