Is your EGR Cooler Blocked ?

Evo4jon

Active Member
Jan 31, 2015
18
0
Just thought I would share my experiences with you all.

I bought my Exeo with 39500 miles on the clock in January. its the Sport model in black with the CAHA 2.0 TDi CR 170PS engine.

It went into Seat for a Radio Code read and they flagged up an issue with the EGR cooler pump.

I used VCDS to check the fault and it was labeled intermittent. I replaced the pump and afterwards I noticed that the coolant pipes to the pump were not getting very hot?

I cleaned out the EGR Valve and it was very caked up with gunk !
egr-01.jpg


Eventually I got it looking like this:
egr-02.jpg


I did the Anti shudder valve too...

Now I looked online and decided to find a used EGR cooler to see what how clogged they got after a few thousand miles. I found one which had done 9800 miles and bought it for £50. It looked fine ! ?? Like new ?

Last week I has my cambelt fitted and asked the garage to fit my 9800 mile EGR cooler.

When the job was done I was surprised to see that my original one was totally clogged !
01.JPG


Happy that my car was running great and had a nice clean cooler, I decided to try and clean the old one...

I thought that the pipes would be fairly thick and strong as they were stainless steel, but i was wrong !!

I used Carb cleaner, brake cleaner engine cleaner... and stupidly an old coat hanger. The carbon was as solid as wood so I tried to soak it and attached the coat hanger to a drill to drill through the carbon. my thoughts were that the carbon would be softer than the stainless tubes and the coat hanger was mild steel to softer...

Is came out Very clean
03.jpg


I still had 4 holes blocked so i was contemplating getting the cooler Ultrasonically cleaned
as they were too difficult to get too... Then I noticed this !
04.jpg


It was damaged caused by my exploits with the coat hanger !

Hmmmm, I think I need to pressure test the cooler side before I spend money on getting it cleaned I thought ! GLAD I DID!

The pressure test was done using a vacuum pump with gauge and sealed hoses...

DAMN !... The pressure was leaking.. I could hear a small whistling sound. :(

I realised that the cooler was knackered and I have binned it...

SO I just thought that altho' I have been a bit of a tool, I should share this experience, as others may do this job one day and may not have a second cooler to hand. It could certainly ruin someone's weekend !

We live and learn !

Jonathan
 

Evo4jon

Active Member
Jan 31, 2015
18
0
Has anyone else had a chance to look at their EGR coolers ? I would like to know if my cooler was blocked because of short journeys and slow driving or whether other people have driven more miles and theirs is clear ?

I think this part tends to get overlooked unlike the EGR valve itself, that everyone is aware that it gets blocked.
 

Toledo16vTdi

Active Member
Jan 5, 2014
32
0
I would recommend fitting an oil catch can between your crank case pipe and inlet pipe to eliminate the egr and inter cooler clogging up with oil or you could delete it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

unclebob

Active Member
Jul 22, 2009
98
0
I have a BKD engine, and fairly sure i have a leak in my cooler - so decided to remove completely rather then clean/replace... may be an option if you can get away with it?
 
Chris Knott Insurance - Competitive quotes for forum members