EGR Valve Cleaning

Someone posted about cleaning their EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) valve on the VW T4 forum and the van ran noticably better after this as over time they get quite blocked.

Before I started I went and bought some gaskets from VW. Since I was planning to block the exhaust input on the EGR I bought 2 x 069 131 547D gaskets and 1 x 028 129 748 which is the gasket between the EGR and the inlet manifold.

Firstly you remove the chargecooler and associated pipes and then remove the EGR valve. I then cleaned the valve using petrol as there were a few mm of gunge coated to the inside of the valve.

The inlet manifold also looked very dirty but to clean this it would have to be removed from the engine. Some people say that it will self clean over time once the EGR is blanked off and I will check it in 6 months to see if this is the case.

I then made a plate from 1.5mm aluminium sheet which was the shape of the gasket to block the exhaust input on the EGR valve. Therefore the engine management will think the EGR is working even though no exhaust gas will now be able to enter the inlet manifold.

I then bolted everything back together and used the 2 gaskets either side of my ali plate to get a good seal. I then took the van for a test drive and it felt slightly improved and I'm going to check the fuel consumption to see if this improves over the 35MPG average I normally get.