Toyota 22RE AFM Air Flow Meter opening, cleaning, adjustment and troubleshooting.

My experience working with the original (22250-35020) and a remanufactured Cardone AFM replacement (74-20004)

Opening up the AFM. Basics of what’s inside and how it works. Cleaning, testing and adjustment tips. Hope this helps!

More info on how the AFM works and how to fully test it here:
https://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...

To add to the video. The Cardone unit not only needed cleaning, but also needed adjustment of the cog/baseline spring tension. By 5 or so notches counter clockwise (to a richer position) to smooth the engine out. At one point I had it 8 or so notches rich which ran fine at load/higher rpm but the engine had issues at idle in gear and threw O2 code 5. Backed off to 5 notches and it runs great and smooth across the range of operation. This could be solely because I had the armature off and re-installed it in a slightly different position on the shaft.

On another note, I worked on the original AFM again and polished those contacts, recleaned the strip.. and also bent the copper colored armature downward slightly. You have to dismount the arm to be able to do this. Essentially you’re creating more spring tension to press those contact pins into the conductive strip once the armature is installed and bolted down. You really don’t want to go far here as I’m sure too much pressure would wear it out faster. Go slow with adjustments and check with your meter in between to see if you get the desired E2-Vs readings. Again, you’re looking for values between 20-1200 ohms, not in a linear fashion, the values will go in waves. (For example 200-700-300-700-300-700 etc) any loss or opening of that circuit, or values outside that range, even very temporarily will cause engine issues. Possibly only in very small operating ranges/RPM/load, but the more spots where this happens the worse the engine will run overall. This, of course, will effect power output and fuel economy.

Best of luck with your Toyota! Cheers