Cleaning out Intake Manifold and EGR

Neil_S

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I have been having some issues with the A4 recently. My local independent replaced a vacuum hose and this had the car back to normal, but this morning on starting the car I had white smoke and eventually the car would stall.

After doing some diagnosis I pulled the vacuum hose out of the EGR and all was fine. Took the car on a test drive and it was perfect.

With this finding I thought I would take out the EGR and Inlet Manifold and give it a good clean to see if I could solve the issue.

One thing to worth noting if your thinking of doing it yourself, best to do this outside as its a dirty job. I did it inside today because of the rain.

Took about 4 hours with 2 1/2 of that crud removal.

I used various screw drivers and bendy things to scrape crud out, contact cleaner and wet and dry.

EGR Before

DWEGRBefore.jpg


EGR After

DWEGRAfter.jpg


Carbon from EGR

DWEGRCrud.jpg


Intake Manifold

DWIntakeAfter.jpg


Carbon from Intake Manifold

DWIntakeCrud.jpg



And finally me turning into Papa Lazarou

DWIntakePap.jpg



Car is driving fine afterwards, haven't driven the car with the vacuum hose plugged in, but it drives fine without and now idles find with the hose connected back up. Will properly test it tomorrow.
 
For those interested in doing this themselves, I took the car apart in the following order.

1. Remove two screws holding in the black plastic air intake to the air filter, remove air intake.
2. Unplug the MAF connector and unscrew the jubilee clip holding the air pipe out of the MAF to the turbo.
3. Unscrew the air filter cover and remove.
4. I removed the air filter to ensure it didn't get any dirt on it.
5. Unscrew the two screws coming into the bottom of the EGR (holding a metal pipe).
6. Unbolt the metal pipe where it connects to the engine and remove
7. Remove the three bolts which hold the EGR onto the inlet manifold.
8. Unclip the pipe into the EGR
9. Unscrew the 6 bolts holding the inlet manifold to the engine block
 
Nasty! I've been psycing myself up to doing this job myself for some time.

How many miles has your car done?
 
Car has done 69k now. It wasn't that difficult, but you need to be methodical and make sure you have a safe place to put all the screws and so forth!
 
Bringing this up again as it looks really helpful. Going to do mine on Friday hopefully.

Does anyone know if i can just leave the EGR valve to soak? Or is it best to keep it dry?
 
I be interested how peeps got to the 3rd bolt by the cam cover as I couldn't get any thing in there to undo it, I had to remove the cam cover and one of the bolts to the pipe that comes from underneath the EGR before I could get access to the 3rd bolt. re intake I didn't even attempt this as I was running out of time just cleaning the EGR value.
 
Good Moaning,

Thank you for the pics & the guide. I've read its literally 6 bolts that need removing, in order to take out the manifold, just 6? I know how to take out the EGR & the EGR Pipe (a bit of a pain), is that it? And the 6 bolts? Much appreciated for any help & advice
 
Morning all,

Done it! I just hope I put the intake manifold gasket in correct. My manifold was ok, nowhere near the level of crud, compared to Neil's, then again, the car lives practically on the motorway.
 
can of 10k boost,, sorted !,

or a couple of tins on high mileage efforts !!

swear by the stuff, its a bit like ronseal, does exactly what it says on the tin !
 
I did this last night, I removed and cleaned straight after a 10 mile drive. All the build up was nice and soft, used a hot pressure washer and it all came out with no effort.

I cleaned the EGR bit with a toothbrush and heating oil.

There must have been a near 5mm build up on everything!!
 
When I did this on my golf I replaced the gaskets.

Has anyone done this at the same time?

Last time I did it I used neat TFR.
 
If you are reading this thread and thinking if it's worth it, it always is.. good couple of mm thick carbon and crud on mine
54f893df9fd431e6d6febc87b9c68172.jpg


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Bringing up this topic again, after looking at that last pic with all the oil, mine looks to be leaking quite a bit of oil from that end, I see what looks like a black rubber washert?.. possible this is what has failed to cause the oil leakage? car is on 175k miles now, I've had it from 120k and egr has never been off/cleaned as far as I know.
I have found in past articles a part number for what I'm guessing is that rubber washer but it doesn't seem to produce anything when put into google/ebay.
 
Bringing up this topic again, after looking at that last pic with all the oil, mine looks to be leaking quite a bit of oil from that end, I see what looks like a black rubber washert?.. possible this is what has failed to cause the oil leakage? car is on 175k miles now, I've had it from 120k and egr has never been off/cleaned as far as I know.
I have found in past articles a part number for what I'm guessing is that rubber washer but it doesn't seem to produce anything when put into google/ebay.

It is a black rubber gasket that might go hard over time and leak.
But why are you removing and cleaning?
Remove it and fit a delete pipe, or just isolate it from use. Never to be needed again.
Job jobbed!
 
Yeah I get the arguement for removing but with mine being a 2004 I gather I'll get the engine management light on which will need coding out at cost.

Also I thought it would now fail MOT if an egr isn't present?

It's just the mess it's making leaking down underneath that's annoying me now, it's never lost/used oil in the past, so would be nice to stop it if I can.
Reality is, I'll probably wipe it over again and not bother at all lol
 
Really easy to remove, but you will have the EML light on your dash. If you can live with it, you can isolate the valve if you don't want to completely remove it, then reconnect for the MOT.
It is an MOT failure not to have it on, but as it's under the engine top cover and testers aren't allowed to remove the cover they can't see if it's there or not.
My emissions are lower without it on/working, as it has been said, it's akin to an engine eating its own ****.
 
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I am tempted to disconnect the pipe to the little UFO on top to disable it & then clean up the leaked oil & see if that stops the leak.
Could do without another light on the dash.. got intermittent ESP light on so hoping that goes off for the MOT!

Any ideas how long the eml light will take to clear when I connect the egr pipe after having it off for a time? don't want to mess anything up/cause any issues
 
The UFO thing is your diaphragm actuator, the pipe is your vacuum line. You just need plug the end with a bolt.
I don't know for sure but I would think the light might clear when you reconnect the pipe. If you needs VCDS to clear it then you might as well have VCDS to remove it permanently for the EGR.
 
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I have been having some issues with the A4 recently. My local independent replaced a vacuum hose and this had the car back to normal, but this morning on starting the car I had white smoke and eventually the car would stall.

After doing some diagnosis I pulled the vacuum hose out of the EGR and all was fine. Took the car on a test drive and it was perfect.

With this finding I thought I would take out the EGR and Inlet Manifold and give it a good clean to see if I could solve the issue.

One thing to worth noting if your thinking of doing it yourself, best to do this outside as its a dirty job. I did it inside today because of the rain.

Took about 4 hours with 2 1/2 of that crud removal.

I used various screw drivers and bendy things to scrape crud out, contact cleaner and wet and dry.

EGR Before

DWEGRBefore.jpg


EGR After

DWEGRAfter.jpg


Carbon from EGR

DWEGRCrud.jpg


Intake Manifold

DWIntakeAfter.jpg


Carbon from Intake Manifold

DWIntakeCrud.jpg



And finally me turning into Papa Lazarou

DWIntakePap.jpg



Car is driving fine afterwards, haven't driven the car with the vacuum hose plugged in, but it drives fine without and now idles find with the hose connected back up. Will properly test it tomorrow.

All this crud is a result of having the car sniffing its own farts by having an operative EGR , your best off disabling the EGR valve by taking the top hose of the EGR top hat and plugging it with a bolt.
 
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I am tempted to disconnect the pipe to the little UFO on top to disable it & then clean up the leaked oil & see if that stops the leak.
Could do without another light on the dash.. got intermittent ESP light on so hoping that goes off for the MOT!

Any ideas how long the eml light will take to clear when I connect the egr pipe after having it off for a time? don't want to mess anything up/cause any issues

Well I've disabled mine by plugging the top hose and it's been running lovely. Yes the dash light is on but I know I can reverse everything quickly for mot time. I have a cheap basic scanner (£20 eBay job) that gives me basic fault codes AND deletes them so if the light is slow to go off after I've reconnected my egr hose I can get it off before the mot. I suspect it would go off quickly on its own because it went off briefly once even with egr disabled. I also have an airbag light on which I have yet to sort out but surprisingly the two lights don't annoy me on the dash as I know what they are and with the car running so nicely I don't care for now! I think my egr is a little less oily since disabling but I can't be sure as I still wiped some residue off today, could've been old stuff as I didn't wash it off properly before anyway, just wiped round. Worth trying as no harm done whatsoever and runs more perky with egr disabled (and lovely to know the engine isn't ingesting its own filth/clogging up the turbo etc).
 
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Well I've disabled mine by plugging the top hose and it's been running lovely. Yes the dash light is on but I know I can reverse everything quickly for mot time. I have a cheap basic scanner (£20 eBay job) that gives me basic fault codes AND deletes them so if the light is slow to go off after I've reconnected my egr hose I can get it off before the mot. I suspect it would go off quickly on its own because it went off briefly once even with egr disabled. I also have an airbag light on which I have yet to sort out but surprisingly the two lights don't annoy me on the dash as I know what they are and with the car running so nicely I don't care for now! I think my egr is a little less oily since disabling but I can't be sure as I still wiped some residue off today, could've been old stuff as I didn't wash it off properly before anyway, just wiped round. Worth trying as no harm done whatsoever and runs more perky with egr disabled (and lovely to know the engine isn't ingesting its own filth/clogging up the turbo etc).
It absolutely is, the car seems to run much smoother without an EGR. Also enables you to clean your turbo to prevent issues.
My emissions at MOT time have fallen too.
 
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