im new, idle issues

[ho1ywars]

Hey guys, my name is shawn. i picked up a two forty in may that had a bad ka and swapped in the SR. EVerything went smooth, did a bunch of searching and basically got the car running and most of the bugs worked out so far. what i am left with is two idle problems.

first one is the engine will not hold an idle AT ALL with the maf plugged in. it will start, the rpms will jump around for two or three seconds surging between 1000 -300 and then it will die.

the second one is when the maf sensor is not plugged in, i understand this put the car "limp mode". is this true? when i run the car like this, it idles for about two mniutes then will start to go into this phase where it wants to shut off every thrity seconds. i will kick the gas, and then it will idle for another thirty seconds, untill it is up to running temperature. once it reaches one ninty on my water temp guage, it idles fine at about six hundred.

these are the only things left that really have me confused. i checked to see if the ecu is throwing any codes when the maf is plugged in, and it is reading fifty five. i remember reading somewhere that fifty five is a clean ECU. The only thing i can think that owuld be cuaseing this is because i am doing all thie idling without a intercooler. But, technically, when idleing the engine is not under boost, so the ecu should have a fuel map that works. Right now i just have the MAF sitting ontop of hte TB with a silicone cuppler holding it on.

i have brand new ka ecu temp sensor im about to throw in, but wouldnt the computer be throwing a code if the current one was bad?

Any suggestions would be helpful, i searched, didnt find anything that helped.

95 240
s13 red top
the engine is completely stock