dirksqjaw

So I drive down to Abu Dhabi for meetings and spend most of the day driving around in traffic, and then driving back to Dubai. It's over 105 here, and 85-90% humidity, it's stupidly hot. The car is hot, but running well all day.

At the end of this marathon day I get rough idle and when engaging the gas peddle, it chugs briefly before raising into the RPM's, where it's then fine. Bumper to bumper traffic when the car was like this was a night mare. chug... chug.. chug. I'm on the way to the mechanic to replace my battery cable when this happens, so I'm like SWEET! If I make it there, he can see the problem.

I park the car out front, and it takes a good 20 minutes for the guy to pull away from another customer to take a ride with me - and the car is fine. GRR!

This has only happened twice, the first time on a stupidly hot day in Abu Dhabi after a few hours in traffic (was over 120 with humidity), and the second was as described above.

He theorized (wrongly I think) that it was the mass airflow sensor just outside of the airbox. He also said that the aftermarket filter and scoop were no good in this region, as the tiny dust particles due to the higher airflow can damage the airflow sensors and screw with the engine.

He swapped in a known defective airflow sensor to see if it was similiar feeling to the other problem and it wasn't. It's a big loss in power overall and terrible, but not what I was experiencing.

What it feels like is vapor lock, which I had in my old grandam during those really hot days back in Vegas. (long time ago!)

Any other ideas?

John@Motorcepts

humidity does it. prolly also running ur AC as well right? I dont think it's a problem. dont worry too much

v_therussian

I keep wanting to say that you don't clean the air filter enough, or smth stupid like that, but you're not the kind of guy that would just leave everything up to chance, living in a climate like that - right?

dirksqjaw

Yup. Replaced the filter after the first time this happened (just to be sure), and that was only 3 weeks ago. No major sand storms since.

Weird to think that it could just be humidity and nothing might not be wrong. Huh.

dirksqjaw

Checked out the MAF sensor, dirty as hell. Air is too dusty here for performance filter. Does the RPI scoop add any benefit with an OEM filter?

theXman

Dirk, that's the setup I'm running with. So far so good. But I will change to BMC soon.