VAG MAF help please persistant intermittent issue!

[lee157]

00553 - mass air flow sensor (g70) 28-10- short to b+ - intermittent

This keeps coming back in VAG

This MAF was replaced a couples years back and does great other than just recently intermittently it will just drop power when you are wanting it, accelerating, climbing hills sometimes it does perfect, other times it surges and then sometimes it just drops out and is gutless.

My plug is fine and there is no cross contact within it, I have checked more than once, it's clean.

I read another post on TDIclub where a guy with same car was having same issue (waiting for reply from him) He had ran new wires to ECM to ensure NOTHING was wrong and still had issue. He wrote he had tried 3 different MAFs and just could not believe all 3 new MAFs were bad and was suspect of the ECM.

Is this a common issue on 98 Beetle TDI?

Can the MAF it's self throw this code and act this way?

My last MAF was just dead and mapped well below what ECM was wanting. Now it maps just higher than what ECM wants except when it drops out, the line just plummets then.