I realized after pulling the piece off that I permanently removed it, and there is no going back from here. Finish the job, or buy a new MAF and then confront the same problem (harness side). The solution - get 3 pieces of wire about 6" long. Strip 1/2" off both ends and solder them to the 3 pins on the left.
After this I shrunk them with a heatgun and some heatshrink for reliability.
Reference this first, it is how each wire needs to get connected back to the harness. From this view left pin = white, middle = black and right = yellow, I think these are power, ground and signal, respectively. Mark these somehow so that you know what they are after reinstalling the cover. On some harnesses the signal wire is shielded but I didn't see anything on mine, so I went with a bare wire. A shielded one wouldn't hurt though.
Next I turn the old harness connector into a cover. Break the pins off of the back and using a dremel or other handy device cut a hole in it for the 3 wires to pass through.
Also, before installing the wires, cut a groove into the actual MAF for the wires. If you dont the hole for them to pass through the connector plate will be near the middle, which isnt good because that part isn't flat and has pins coming out of it. Do this before soldering the wires, and try to not get anything inside the MAF. I used a compressed air nozzle to spray it out completely.
This is what the finished product looks like with the plate installed again. This plate has a rubber gasket for sealing so it's a good piece to recycle here. I currently have some tape around the wire hole and MAF body for further protection, which I will remove and seal up with a sealant or hot glue soon.
The last step is to attach these 3 wires to the harness. I simply cut the harness side connector off of the harness and soldered the 2 sets of wires together. A cleaner solution would be to use a universal 3 wire male/female connector (auto parts stores) and solder those to each set of wires and have a new connector.
The MAF has been running steadily like this for over a month now. Good luck if you need to do this yourself.
-This post is part of larger collection of similar writeups and howtos behind My Project Car.
