5 Blown MAF sensors in 6 months - seeking help

Hi all
Clearly I have some electrical gremlin recently developed & after persisting for 5 new MAF’s I now have to take my beautiful patrol off the road. 439000kms of great service deserves a certain amount of respect & I want to keep this rig in the family but my wife has said no more MAF’s.
Has anyone got any advice what could cause brand new, clean sensors to just fizzle to limp mode for no apparent reason. Car is kept serviced with a regimen of oil every 5000kms, air & oil filter 10000kms & fuel at 20k. Original MAF got 400000kms & now in 6 months 5 more.
Please help if you can.
Regards
Soup

Crikey Soup Mate!
Do feel your family pain there Brother :-(
Total electrical nuffy I am, hopefully a Top Legend here can assist!
Merely a 4.2L dinosaur driver myself but do wherever possible stick with overpriced OEM bits needed every decade or so.
Best of luck, hopefully it’s an easy fix and shouldn’t be designed Mr Nissan limpy mode affecting poor buggers them turd all modern vehicle designers [emoji90]


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Where or who are you buying the air flow meters from?

Dang, that is a strange issue.

A MAF is one of the simplest devices on the vehicle (two thermistors and a plastic housing) sooo...

Are you using OEM MAF sensors?
If so they will be under warranty as a new factory supplied part.
Also might pay to get Nissan to diagnose and fit one then if it blows up the whole job (labour and parts) is warranted.

If you are using aftermarket sensors, try an OEM.

Having a MAF "fizzle" is almost unheard of on any vehicle, about all I can guess at is a very unusual fault in the ECU

Could be an electrical problem somewhere else that is supplying too much voltage to / or drawing too much current through the MAF sensor. As ET says get Nissan or an auto elec that knows Patrols to have a look.

Not as simple as failing due to being bombarded with dirty air from a split or hole in the inlet system?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mudnut

Not as simple as failing due to being bombarded with dirty air from a split or hole in the inlet system?

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Possible I spose but can't see how myself... it would need to be serious "dirt" to take out a thermistor and I would think if it was dirt then a clean would get the MAF working again albeit limping again soon after.

Will be interesting to find out what the issue is thats for sure.
Probably 75% of vehicles on the aussie roads never have a MAF Sensor cleaned in its lifetime.
It is only forums like this that raise the issue (or a MAF OBD fault code obviously) so most Aussies wouldn't ever have heard of a MAF Sensor.
Having 5 fail on 1 vehicle in 6 months is, dare I say, unprecedented :p

Attached this video that I found very useful for dentifying MAF sensor voltage supply from ECU and for locating MAF sensor signal wire(voltage varies with air flow_nom 1.9-2.0v @idle).

I probed into the back of the MAF plug sensor signal wire and monitor MAF voltage on the fly in the cab using a std off the shelf multimeter (part of manual boost control monitoring MAF voltage in addition to air flow rate).

Probed to gain elec continuity by slipping a small safety pin in under shrink tube insulation of MAF sensor signal wire (where insulated wire enter back of MAF plug).

Note: when testing MAF with IGN on, use only the battery negative terminal for earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6eaOd3ihiE

As was suggested, use genuine MAF sensor but check circuit first prior to new install.

as others have said , this seems a strange problem . so first to cover some basics . do you have a catch can and has it been cleaned / emptied recently . have you cleaned the maf sensors with maf sensor cleaner and re-tested . have you tested the maf sensors with a multi meter to establish that they are in fact faulty . i think you should answer these question first so that others a have a better idea of what to suggest next . buying 5 replacement maf sensors has already become an expensive exercise and it could become much more so if you don't cover the basics first . hope this helps