Clean that EGR valve!
Notice an improvement in idle quality
Here's the method I used to clean the valve: Compressed the bellows by hand and wedged a socket to hold bellows down, and keep the pintle retracted. Laid it upright so the pintle assembly (round) and manifold port (rectangular) are facing up. Sprayed throttle body cleaner in the pintle assembly and the manifold port until each was full. Let sit awhile. Emptied. Repeated until the throttle body cleaner run-off was fairly clean. With pintle still retracted, took a skinny metal wire brush, inserted into pintle assemby and brushed off the face of the sealing surface of the pintle body that contacts the valve body throat when the pintle is closed. Sprayed with tb cleaner a final time to get any brushed off residue out. Used wire brush to clean off the end of the pintle-- it had some build up still on it.
Prior to cleaning the valve, with the valve off, I used some metalized duct tape (shiney chrome looking tape) and sealed off the EGR intake port on the manifold. Started car and observed idle quality. Seemed improved from what it was with dirty valve installed, which finalized the decision perform the above described cleaning of the valve.
NEXT CLEANING PROJECT: Throttle body itself. Full removal cleaning. But I have to buy a tb-to-manifold gasket 1st. I have new gasket for the lower IAC passages and also a new foam orange one for the TPS, but will need the one that goes between the tb and manifold. I expect the full removal tb cleaning to further improve idle quality.
Last edited by Lone Ranger; Jun 5, 2005 at 04:15 PM.





