How many miles?

Could potentially be a dirty MAF, I'd clean it and see if that fixes your issue.

 

Hmm... good things to check. And yeah, it's a recent problem.

I was wondering who in the area would be good at diagnosing this, thanks!

About 49.5k miles. Good call on the MAF, looks like that could be a good candidate. I'll see if I can find a write-up on checking it.

 

It's not too difficult, just unplug the maf, unscrew it from the air hose, and clean. Make sure you use a contact cleaner vs something that would leave residue. Just clean the MAF by spraying it, don't use a brush, after it's dry, put it back in your air hose and plug it back in.

I typically use MG Chemicals Super Wash, you can pick it up at fry's where they keep their electronics components. I believe Kragen and Autozone carry some chemicals which are meant for cleaning your MAF as well.

 

I see this a lot at AHQ..

How many miles do you have on your car? and, when was the last time you changed your plugs? What type of plugs?

and have you done any intake cleaning? and when was the last time you did this?

Have you tried cleaning your MAF sensor?

 

The type of gas you use has a lot to do with how your car runs too.. 3 pump gas versus independent 91 oct only pumps. If you dont understand what I mean here is the explanation.

Say you go to the gas station and you go to one of those gas pumps that has one hose and you push the button to select one of three grades. These are bad because say the last person bought 87 oct and you go to use 91, well there is always about a gallon of what was pumped last going into your tank. It knocks off your total octane in your tank down by one or two percent. And doing so maybe 10 times will basically make you car run on 87 or 88 octane.

Try to use a few gallons of 100 octane in your tank if this is the type of pumps you go to. A way to resolve this is by driving to the pumps and calculating the amount versus the number of gallons the last person bought and you'll know if it was 91, 89, or 87.

Try to look for 91 octane pumps that are just 91 oct and not shared. Guaranteed 91 oct that way...

Are you using either 76 or Chevron?

 

I'll check out Kragen for the cleaner. Since I'm new to car engines, I'm not sure where under the hood the MAF would be, though.

The car has about 49.5k miles on it and I believe it has the original plugs (I bought it used with just shy of 20k miles). I just got the air intake replaced yesterday when I got my oil changed, and it doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on the symptoms I described.

Whoa, interesting. When possible I try to use 76, but every once in a while I fill up on something like Valero just because of needing it in a hurry and convenience.

 

Ok, you misread the part of intake cleaning.. What I meant was cleaning of the intake manifold, we have this stuff made by MOC products that works really good. If you need help with your MAF airflow sensor let me know. We have something for that too also by MOC products. Shoot me a pm.