mass air meter problems???

["Eve Slater" <ESlater@tapnet.net>]

I have a 92 100CS Quattro which I love. I have only owned it for about
9 months. It has developed a problem that 3 mechanics have been unable
to solve. When the car is first started, even if I run in the grocery and
come out shortly and re-start it, it has what I would call a hesitation
problem.
Here's what happens:  the car starts right up- but within 30 seconds
or so it wants to die-

if you let the car just warm up and idle, you can watch the rpms drop down, it almost stalls and then finally sort of coughs the hairball out and returns to normal-

if you do not let the car warm up and just drive off, the 'hesitation' still happens: my foot is on the gas steadily and the car just loses power. If I give it more gas, it will still hesitate and then all of a sudden take off like a shot.

This might happen again to a lesser degree shortly after this but never after about 3-4 minutes of starting the car.

The Audi dealer did the following and it didn't help at all: repair intake
leak, replace thermostat, replace egr valve. He says he is mystified, although
he guaranteed that if I spent the $ it would fix the problem.
I found an independent mechanic who seems to know what he's doing.
After looking the car over and cleaning the fuel injectors, and talking
to some other mechanic afficianatos, he thinks it is the mass air meter.
He told me that Audi says the mass air meters either work or don't, that
there's no inbetween. His mechanic buddies and he say otherwise. They feel
the meters do sometimes marginally fail. He suggested finding a chat group
on-line and running it by some other audi owners who may have had a similar
problem.
Anyone out there have any experience w/ this??? Any help would be greatly
appreciated! You can e-mail me directly since I am not a list member. Thanks!
                                       
eslater@tapnet.net