MAF praise and how to make my car new again?!

So im at 175,000 on my 97 lgt and it started to run like crap. It all started on a longer ski trip. My car burn a lil oil and i forgot to add some. and on the last climb to the mountain my car was bogging bad. I had to floor it to get up it and even tho my temp gauge read normal, i smelled a burning. On my way back I immediately stopped and added a quart of oil. It drove a lil better. It still sucked in throttle response. It either drove at around town speeds, or you had to floor it to get more power. This meant even meager hills or decently quick accelerations into traffic you would have to stomp it. I have a dragon intake on it and the filter was pretty dirty. I cleaned the MAF with carb cleaner or whatever I had and that throttle response was back! If your accelerator does not behave like it should, clean your MAF. Now to the bad part. So my car still is acting old and I don't know whats up with it now. I still get that burning smell occasionally but I think it is coolant. I had my head gaskets done at 135k. Could they be going bad again? Other symptoms are it seems like there is quite a bit of friction with the motor in general, but can definitely hear some "roughness" with the shifts on my auto. 180,000 is the mark for major maintenance so could the tranny fluid be bad? Ive also been reported by a friend that some smoke came out from under when we were racing/cruising

 

Any help is appreciated. Going to observe the coolant level starting now. And please let me know if there are other reasons for burning coolant besides the head gaskets going bad. Thanks

coolent would not come out of the motor though the head gaskets.

 

but it could in these spots..

water pump gasket

coolent cross pipe orings

t-sat oring

rusted heater core pipes.

and other misc coolent hoses

 

oil can come from

the head cover seals

rusted oil pan

oilpan gasket

oil pressure switch sensor

 

other preformance killing things like you mention can be

knock sensor

bad coil pack

bad wires

dieing fuel pump.

 

 

snf the tranny could have binding clutch packs

generally speaking, in a na car if it has trouble when climbing a mountain or in higher elevations its the map and baro not getting along. one of the two could be bad. barometric pressure goes down as you get further from sea level. at s.l. it should be about 29-ish. it will only calibrate upon initial start-up. if you are going up, can either floor it for a few secs to force a recalibration or you can pull over and restart the car. but you could have a bad map or baro. you should look at the data to make sure but a good bet is the map sensor.

i have a spare. they can be over 100 bucks new.

coolent would not come out of the motor though the head gaskets.

 

 

*coolant. Depends on where the blow is in the headgasket. There have been several cases where coolant would come out of the motor and drop right on the exhaust so you can smell it burning.

 

 

I have a weird burning smell that comes from my car, but I know what it is. The burning smell could be axle grease from a torn CV boot. It smells gross. Burning coolant smells sweet.

 

 

Clean your maf again, and I'd say put the stock intake on your car to see what it does.

coolant will most definetely leak out of subie head gaskets. it was one of sure signs when we were inspecting cars at dealership i used to work for.

Wouldn't say it smells gross, but it doesn't smell too great either. Thanks for the info. I think I will try cleaning the MAF again and getting the major maintenance done and see how the car does after that.

You also might try seafoaming everything. It does wonders.

K so please explain the difference between the smells more. I remember when it first happened, it smelled like crap. I put my heat on and could barely stand it. Now the burning smell is sweet so I believe it is coolant. And seafoam? Heard of it but unfamiliar how to use it and how it works.

seafoam. directions on the can. sweet smells are coolant. they are glycol based which means they have a form of sugar in them. crap smells (you'll need to be a little more specific) but its probably oil burning. that stinks to no living end and i'm sure w/ 180k on the engine, its leaking oil in more place than one. most likely candidate would be the valve covers and cam/crank seals.

Wow seafoam does do wonders. My car runs way better now. I only got the crap smell a couple times but taht was months ago, so now I'm not worried. I'll drive the shit out of it until it gives me problems again

k so i noticed the foul smell again. Checked tranny fluid and that crap smell became even more apparent when I pulled out the dipstick. It was low and my shifts were pretty bad. Added a quart and I think my car is back to normal again. Why would I be losing tranny fluid tho even then I never find any residue under where my car is parked?

could only be leaking out under pressure. you could do a torque convertor stall test while parked over some carboard to find out.

My MAF went bad again so i picked up one from a junkyard. Its product code is the exact same as the one I had before, but missing an F at the end. Does this matter or does it still work?

all 1st and second gen MAFs work