I feel like such an Idiot....

I drove my car around today and it was bogging down ALOT and surging. My CEL popped on and I grabbed my tuner and checked my trouble codes. I had two codes and one interested me a bit it said P1260 THEFT DETECTED (VEHICLE IMMOBILIZED), lol wtf? The other was a MAF code.

So I poped the hood and took a look around and looked at my MAF, It was unplugged. When I played with my intake I forgot to hook my MAF back up.

So I plugged the MAF in and cleared the codes.

Does anyone know how bad this is for the car? Does the car just revert to a safety fuel map?

 

Sometimes it will sometimes it wont most of the time. When a maf goes bad it can make the car run lean most of the time it is on 1 bank. I think it is bank 1 that runs lean. Now I dont think you would have hurt anything i have done the samething once in mine but i wouldnt worry about it maf sensors go bad all the time and i dont see them causing any catistrouphic (spelling) damage.

 

That seems like a valid point.

It would make sense that Ford would have a backup/safety in case that failed

 

Its nothing to worry about. You didn't hurt anything. With the MAF unpluged the pcm just runs a rich setting to be safe.

 

way to go there buddy! lol

 

Yupp! made me feel like a genus!

 

crap happens. Atleast it was something small like that and nothing thats would cuase any major damage.

 

^^very true, i did the same thing when i installed my x pipe, thought metal and metal would go together lol

 

I'm sure this question has been asked before, but I am so use to the search being down I don't even bother anymore, which i guess could be considered a bad habit.

 

I had an MAF sensor go bad on my 2003 focus.. and i didn't get the light checked until like 4,000 miles later. Stupid, I know, but here's the deal.

I had my car in the shop, the auto trans wouldn't stay in gear so they replaced some seals etc, when I picked up the car it had the engine light on but the shop was closed. I drove it home and the light was off the next morning. The next day, the light came back on again. I called and setup an appointment to get the light checked the next day but had to cancel the appointment. I figured the car was fine since ford had just handed it back to me and that the light was likely due to them forgetting to reset the error codes.

well, 4,000 miles (not very long, month or so) without an MAF sensor later I took the car in finally to have them figure out what was wrong, they told me the problem. the car ran lean for 4,000 miles which gunked up a bunch of stuff, they were able to clean it up and there was no real damage to anything.

So my guess is, your car's fine, maybe a little dirty but it's likely peachy.